


Blank Walls, Empty Spaces

by Magical_Destiny



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Banneroff, Brucenat - Freeform, Brutasha - Freeform, Drama & Romance, F/M, hulkwidow - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-08
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2018-04-03 10:20:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4097299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magical_Destiny/pseuds/Magical_Destiny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha Romanoff was never caught off guard - with one incredible exception. For such a big guy, Bruce Banner managed to sneak up on her. (A short story tracing the relationship from inauspicious start to possible finish.) Brutasha/BruceNat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally archived on ff.net between 5/16/15 and 5/28/15. My pen name over there is Katla.
> 
> Let me know if you enjoy this fic!

It started in New York, in a dingy schwarma joint that was half-destroyed in the Chitauri invasion. Natasha and the rest of the Avengers stumbled inside and collapsed into a circle of chairs as Tony ordered for them. Her body felt impossibly heavy, the food was tasteless when it finally arrived - as though even her tastebuds had decided to call it quits after the day she'd had - and eating with Iron Man, an unfrozen super soldier from World War II, a Norse God who was actually an alien, and the scientist with a werewolf-style problem who had tried to kill her the day before was a little weird. But food was food when you were about to collapse from exhaustion. The werewolf scientist in question smiled faintly at her after they had choked down as much as they could.

"I'm really sorry," he said, sliding into Clint's seat when the Avengers began to stand and drift away from the table. "About what happened… with the Other Guy."

"You apologized once already-" she began, but he was shaking his head.

"Well it's not enough," he interrupted gently. "It will never be enough, but I hope that if you know how sorry I am, how much I wish that I could change what happened…" he shrugged and suddenly looked more exhausted than she felt. It hurt to look at him when he sagged in his seat, deep shadows under the eyes that always carried an echo of fear. "I thought it might help."

She stared at him for a long moment and couldn't quite size him up. He was genuine - and that was always the hardest thing to counter. She made a call she rarely made and decided to reciprocate. "Your help out there was critical today. So I think you're being a little hard on yourself." His eyes snapped to hers and she read surprise behind the ever-present fear. But she saw the objection welling behind it, and she continued before he could insist that he was horrible. "But," she began forcefully, "if it will make you feel better… apology accepted."

He smiled at her and it was the first real smile she had seen on his face. The tense and drained look slid away and for just a moment she thought that smiling suited him. "Thank you," he said quietly, and slumped against the back of his chair. The exhaustion settled around him again like a heavy shroud and he looked almost gray. They sat alone in the ruined schwarma joint until Cap's voice called to them through the gaping hole where the door had once been.

"Back to the land of the living," Bruce deadpanned. She managed a weak laugh. As they shuffled through the ankle-deep dust and glass to emerge into the fading light outside, Natasha thought that it might be more appropriately termed the land of the half-dead.

* * *

They helped with search and rescue for a while, and Natasha quickly lost sight of Bruce in the piles of debris and the flash of emergency vehicles. She wasn't surprised when she heard that Tony had gotten him out of the area; she had seen Bruce's darting glance and the uneasy set of his shoulders around the milling crowds. He was always worried about being triggered around civilians. She felt a swift stab of pity and worked on, ignoring the two images that swam before her eyes more clearly than the broken asphalt and the swirling dust: Bruce's warm smile and the Hulk's murderous gaze.

* * *

The days passed, and she slept off the bruises and lacerations and general hit-by-a-bus feeling that always followed a huge fight. Her body healed, but her mind was another story. The nightmares were becoming a problem.

Nightmares had been something of a lifelong job hazard for her, so it was well-trod territory and she wasn't even surprised at first. It started as she expected it would, with Loki's sneer behind the glass of his cage, his words slicing her like daggers. "Your ledger is gushing red," she heard and she was crushed by the truth of it. She looked down at herself in the dream, covered in blood oozing from somewhere - _everywhere_ \- and Loki laughed and laughed. But the worst part always came last. The Hulk always came bursting through the walls with his face contorted with rage and his eyes fixed squarely on her. He lunged at her as she finally screamed…

And there she always woke, just as her terror spiked and she realized that she was going to die - that Bruce Banner was going to kill her. She spent a few sleepless hours in the middle of every night breathing deeply and dispelling the horror with every calming technique she could think of.

When the nightmares continued and grew more frightening instead of less, Natasha knew she had to act quickly. She had learned long ago that facing fears down was essential if you wanted to avoid being ruled by them. She resolved to spend some time with Bruce Banner.

* * *

She got her chance sooner than expected. Stark summoned everyone to what he called "the farewell ceremony" and Clint announced that they were picking up Dr. Banner on the way when she climbed into the car. Bruce took the back seat with a murmured greeting and they spent most of the ride listening to Clint's questionable choice in radio stations. She summoned the energy to rib him about the fact that there was a country station programmed into his favorites, and aggressively ignored the annoying way her traitorous mind kicked up memories of the Hulk's enraged roar and his impossibly fast and heavy footsteps pounding just behind her.

They finally found the meeting place in Central Park. ("Why did the gods cross the street?" muttered Clint as they found Thor and Loki standing beside the road looking like celestial tourists.) Natasha was torn between feeling intensely twisted happiness at the sight of a bound, gagged, and defeated Loki and feeling of growing dread in her stomach over the fact that she would have to admit her difficulties to Dr. Banner. She dealt with the first feeling by smiling daggers at Loki whenever she caught his eyes (which felt fantastic) and the second by resolving to speak to Bruce as soon as whatever-this-was happened. Thor and Loki took hold of the cube's cylindrical carrier and disappeared in a swirl of blue fire, presumably teleporting somehow to Asgard. She barely blinked. She wasn't even surprised anymore, at least not by gods and magic. Monsters, however, were posing a little bit of a problem. She turned to look for Bruce, but he was already walking back to the car. He paused to check for traffic before crossing the street and she smiled despite herself.

He tugged on the door handle and looked comically lost when it was locked. "Clint," she called. "Keys?" He tossed them with his characteristic perfect aim without stopping his chat with Cap.

"Where are you going in such a hurry?" she asked Bruce as she clicked the unlock button.

He looked sheepish, and Natasha thought that if his weariness wasn't always winning out that it might be his default expression. "Sorry," he began - another of his defaults - and gestured towards Stark, who was shaking hands with Cap. "Just need my bag. Tony has some scheme that involves me moving into one of his houses. It involves my own private lab, so…" he shrugged. "I guess I'm in."

Natasha didn't have time to pick apart the strange swell of relief and disappointment that rose up in her chest. Whatever it was, it made it peculiarly difficult to smile. "Oh," she managed, reaching into the backseat for his single bag. "Sounds like fun."

She handed him the very light bag and he smiled at her. It was the genuine one. "Thanks for everything, Agent Romanoff."

"Natasha," she corrected and managed a smile herself. "Take care of yourself, Dr. Banner."

He turned away and climbed into Tony's ostentatious car. Natasha stared after them for a moment, and thought distantly that the two of them looked like little boys on their way to a sleepover.

"They're excited," Clint remarked when Tony and Bruce finally sped away and Natasha took her seat.

"Endless time in a lab with only Tony Stark for company - who wouldn't be excited?" Natasha asked flatly. Clint smirked and pressed the gas.

The park disappeared behind them and Natasha divided her time between rolling her eyes as Clint sang along with the radio and coming up with another way for handling her nightmares.

* * *

They had only spent a few hours at the nearest S.H.I.E.L.D. installation when Nick Fury appeared at their door, wearing his usual black leather coat and an expression of disgust. Thankfully it wasn't directed at them. "Why am I not surprised that you two are still here?" he began, crossing the room to stand by the windows. "Any normal person would ask for time off after a fight like this and here you two are…" he glanced at the two of them, leaning towards a computer monitor. "You're keeping tabs, aren't you? Assessing where you need to go next?" Natasha nodded and Nick gave the sigh of a man who is always right. "No, you're not. You're taking some personal time, right now." He caught her mutinous look and Clint's rising objection and silenced them both with his one-eyed glare. "Now, agents. Not only do you deserve it, but the media will be all over you like a pack of wolves if you stay here. And who does that help? Besides, Barton," he added pointedly, "I know you need the time to explain the whole 'Battle of New York' thing to your wife."

The hint of rebellion that had frosted Clint's face finally cleared. "Whatever you say, boss," he replied and powered down the monitor. "What about you, Nat? You coming with me?"

"Yes," Fury answered for her, "She is."

* * *

She was still irritated with Nick when they arrived at Clint's farm. But she had to admit that if she had to be exiled, at least this was a pretty good spot to serve the time. "Nowheresville, USA," Clint announced with one of his stupid grins as he killed the engine of his truck. "Ready for some R&R, Nat?"

"You know it," she muttered mutinously, but he knew how she really felt - he always did. He smiled at her, but his eyes turned serious. "You should really try and get some rest while we're out here. You looked like you've been stretched pretty thin over these past few days." He leaned back and stared at a point far off in the distance and his smile faded altogether. "You definitely saved my sorry mind-controlled ass," he commented lightly, but she saw the shadow of what Loki had done in his eyes. For just a moment her hatred flared hot and savage toward the so-called god. "Forget about him, Clint," she interjected suddenly, hoping to dislodge the haunted look that had settled into his eyes. "You were a hero in New York. You've always been a hero, no matter what alien psychos may throw at us." He finally laughed a little. The door to the house opened and Laura Barton stepped out, looking concerned and happy all at once just like she usually did. The change that came over Clint was as instantaneous as always. His eyes lit up and his entire body relaxed. "Home," he whispered. "Let's go home, Natasha."

So they climbed out of the car and they did.

* * *

Clint and his family were always a wonder to Natasha. She had first laid eyes on Clint over the shaft of the arrow he had nocked and pointed at her throat. His appraising eyes had taken her in - and seen something. She still didn't know what it was and Clint still couldn't explain it after all these years. "There was more to you, Nat," he always shrugged when she repeated the question. Clint was warmth and safety. His family was warmth and safety, too.

She had met his family long ago, and they occupied a sacred space in her mind. It was like a perfect, crystalline snow globe complete with rolling fields, a snug house, and the laughter of children, "The Bartons" etched into a golden plaque on the globe's sturdy base. His life belonged on a greeting card. He had laughed when she told him that the first time she came to stay there. "A secret spy greeting card, maybe," he had corrected with a grin.

She was drawn like a moth to the warmth and soft light of the Barton's home. The first time the kids sat beside her during a movie and gradually used her as a pillow had filled her with an ache too deep to express - or to understand. She loved Clint. She loved Laura. She loved his kids.

She treasured her time there: eating dinner in a kitchen, helping out on the farm, playing with the kids… for most of her life she had never known that living could be so simple and so good. Sometimes she still forgot, but visiting the Bartons always brought it back. She was glad to be with them as she tried to work her way through the nightmares.

Clint caught on quickly to what she was going through. "Nightmares?" he asked when he found her in the living room long after midnight, sitting in a circle of lamplight as she waited for the sun to come up. "Yeah," she answered, hoping she didn't look as pathetic as she felt. Clint sat down on the sofa beside her. "The old ones?" he probed gently. She flinched inwardly as she remembered her old dreams about the Red Room, but that was old pain and she slid away from it easily now. "New," she answered without elaborating. "Okay," said Clint. "You wanna tell me about the dream?"

"Not this time," she answered apologetically. "Okay," he agreed, and they didn't speak anymore. He did, however, settle back into the cushions and sat with her until she fell asleep on the couch. She woke up with the sun streaming through the windows, the smell of bacon, eggs, and biscuits cooking in the kitchen, and the kids playing on the floor. "Auntie Nat!" they cried in unison when she sat up, and quickly flung their latest lego creations into her lap. Despite her stiff back and burning eyes, she couldn't help but smile.

She loved the Bartons. Their home was a beautiful place, whole and wholesome in a way she had never imagined until she encountered it. But sometimes, Clint's wholeness scared her in the way she imagined an escaped circus lion would be scared of a wild pride. Wholeness, happiness... it was so foreign, that she almost couldn't understand it. Those instincts and desires had been beaten out of her during her time in the Red Room. She felt like an amputee trying to use a limb that no longer existed. She didn't feel like a human anymore, let alone like sister, daughter, or mother material. His home was wonderful… but it filled her with a terrible ache. She buried the empty ache deep, and dragged out smiles and kind words instead and tried not to feel like the shadow cast by so much surrounding light.

* * *

She and Clint went back to work after a few weeks, and months passed without incident. After the insanity of recruiting for the Avengers and holding off an alien invasion, Natasha didn't mind the lull.

She heard occasionally about Tony's project to rebuild Stark Tower into Avengers Tower in New York, but she wasn't holding her breath. After Thor's return to Asgard, Bruce's complete disappearance from any official radar (although S.H.I.E.L.D. was always keeping tabs), and Tony's recent sparring match with the Mandarin and subsequent destruction of many of his suits, Natasha half expected that the Avengers would never assemble again. Even her nightmares faded with the passage of time.

The closest she got to avenging were the joint missions with Captain America. To her surprise, she found that she and Steve actually worked quite well together. His no-nonsense attitude, smart command decisions, and ridiculous combat abilities were the best combination of skill sets she had seen in a long time. So they took down lots of threats together and Natasha thought that the mini-Avengers was turning out to be a pretty effective team.

At least it was until Hydra struck. It was one of the more terrible moments in her life when she and Steve stood together and listened to an evil supercomputer tell them that S.H.I.E.L.D. was nothing more than a host body for the Hydra infection. They went on the run and everything she thought she knew was ripped apart. She distracted herself from the lethal sensation of futility by finally getting to know Steve Rogers.

Captain America - she had always thought it was a silly notion. But when they fought their way out of bomb blasts together and stole classified information together (and kissed to distract their pursuers from their identities, flustering Steve to her endless amusement) and rallied to destroy S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra within it, she realized a few things. Steve Rogers was genuinely trustworthy. He was a guy that, no matter where you knocked, was solid all the way through.

But for all his innocence, he wasn't without pain. She knew more than she wanted to about him after her time in S.H.I.E.L.D.; she knew about his weekly visits to the nursing home that housed Margaret Carter and she knew about the tears he had shed there. When she kissed Steve as part of the classic PDA-as-distraction tactic, she idly let her mind wander over the idea of suggesting herself instead of yet another girl from the office as a date. She rejected the idea almost before thinking it.

Steve wasn't a free man. He carried Margaret Carter - Peggy - around with him, a phantom that filled up the empty place inside him but never soothed it. She knew the power of memories - and she knew that she could never fill that void for him. All her idle thoughts, and even her sadness for Steve's situation with Peggy helped to distract her from what could have been crippling grief when S.H.I.E.L.D. became yet another mistake in her long litany of failings. For a while the dreams where Loki laughed at her as she stood drenched in the bloody red of her gushing ledger recurred; she fought to keep going no matter how tired she felt after her sleepless nights. She refocused on positive things, a technique Clint often mentioned. When Steve was around, she focused on his positives.

She discovered that she loved most about Steve was the way he looked at her. There was no lust, no underestimation, and no judgement. In his eyes, she was his equal. She was also his friend. And she knew how he treated his friends. (She thought sometimes, after it was all over and S.H.I.E.L.D. was only a memory, about finding Steve on the shore of the lake after the helicarriers fell. He had been bleeding and nearly dead, but all he asked was "Bucky?" She remembered the look of determination on his face when she handed him Barnes' file. Most of all, she wondered how it was possible that she ended up with a friend like him, who looked at her without reservations even though he knew everything about who she was and who she had been.) Steve himself was one big positive in her life. But for every positive there must be a negative.

His honesty, his commitment, his absolute trustworthiness - they were too much. They burned her. Like a vampire, she mused with bitter humor when S.H.I.E.L.D. was gone, Fury was in the wind, and Steve was spending his days hunting for the Winter Soldier with their former friendship in mind. His goodness (and she thought that he was the only person she could ever truly apply the word to) was sunlight and she couldn't walk in the daylight, not without burning.

Steve left to track down whatever was left of Bucky Barnes and she was relieved, disappointed, and alone.

* * *

The call from Tony came not long after.

"Romanoff, the Avengers are assembling. Are you in?" he fired off as soon as she picked up her phone. She had to sit through some rambling and occasionally the music in the background almost drowned him out (AC/DC. _Again._ ), but she could also hear that there was some friendly conversation humming behind him. She picked out the voices of Pepper Potts and Bruce Banner before Tony finally pressed her for an answer.

"Alright, Stark. I'll be there tomorrow," she answered, feeling a little nostalgic for the days when S.H.I.E.L.D. had existed and their battles had been a little more clear cut. Besides, he had mentioned something about free room and board and she wasn't exactly living the high life between losing her employment and dodging the media after the less-than-pleasant facts of her life had been dumped onto the internet. A free penthouse in New York sounded like just the thing. And if there was a little avenging to be done on the side… so much the better.

For the first time in a while, Natasha smiled.

* * *

She arrived at Avengers Tower the next morning, carrying a bag even lighter than the one she had handed Bruce months ago in Central Park. Tony's all-purpose A.I. Jarvis identified her and unlocked the front door. "Hello, Agent Romanoff," it greeted with its disconcerting mix of politeness and omniscience. The electronic voice came from all around, and she looked up as she listened although there were no eyes to meet. "Welcome to Avengers Tower. There is a room waiting for you. Shall I direct you there now?"

"How about a drink first," came Bruce's voice from ahead. He had paused in mid-step in front of the elevator doors, holding a stack of papers and looking as surprised to see her as she was to see him. He was dressed in clothes that fit, and looking as though sleep and regular meals were part of his routine these days. It was a much better look than scrappy-and-on-the-run. "From what I've heard about S.H.I.E.L.D. and… well… everything, you could probably use one."

"Dr. Banner," she greeted. Her smile came naturally.

"Bruce," he corrected instantly.

"Bruce," she agreed. "You read my mind."

* * *

Hanging out with the Avengers could be fun when gods on world-conquering ego trips weren't involved, Natasha discovered. Tony and Pepper had been called away for a few days, but Bruce was already settled in a room near the suite of labs when she arrived, and Steve arrived soon afterward.

"Natasha," he greeted with a smile showing signs of wear around the edges. She knew before she asked that he hadn't been able to make any headway in the search for Bucky Barnes. She listened to his summary of the search anyway.

Bruce drifted in halfway through. Steve paused and nodded at him.

"Dr. Banner."

"Captain America," Bruce replied. "This all sounds horrible," he commented quietly.

"I guess it is," said Steve in a tired voice.

"Should I go?" Bruce was already drifting back towards the hallway he had appeared from, looking as uncertain as a child who had wandered into the wrong classroom. Of course, he always looked like that.

"I plan on updating the whole team on this situation. And you're part of the team, Doctor." In Natasha's professional opinion, putting people at ease was one of Steve's lesser known powers. Bruce immediately moved to sit down; it didn't escape Natasha's notice that he walked past a large number of seats before finally settling in the chair furthest from hers. Steve launched back into his tale of cold leads and trails that went nowhere. Natasha listened carefully and felt a twinge of sympathy for the frayed quality in his voice. Steve was so tired.

At the back of her mind, she filed away the fact that Bruce didn't look at her even once. Steve wrapped up and Bruce offered to take him to his room; it seemed that Natasha wasn't the only one to notice how worn Cap looked. The sitting room was enormous, but the wide berth he gave her as he led Steve back into the hallway was still obvious.

She deliberately didn't look in his direction as she analyzed why he was avoiding her.

* * *

In the following days, Clint came to stay and Thor wasn't far behind. "Tony said there was a meeting," Clint explained, even though Tony himself had yet to show his face. Thor flew in - quite literally - from England, where he was apparently staying with his Earth-bound girlfriend, Jane Foster.

There were lot of lively discussions of battles when Thor and Clint were around at the same time, and the talk turned towards science when Bruce engaged in the conversation. He was full of questions about Asgard's rainbow bridge, Thor's hammer, and even the work of Jane Foster.

Clint had taken to groaning whenever Bruce brought up a project Jane was working on; Thor had a tendency to go starry-eyed when he discussed Jane. It was a rather disgusting display and she and Clint had pulled quite a few faces behind Thor's muscled back as Bruce tried very hard not to laugh. He had a terrible poker face.

Despite all the late dinners and catching up sessions the team fell into as they waited for Tony to show up and tell them what was going on, Bruce Banner's strange behavior continued. Natasha was surprised at first that he should avoid her, but the nascent feeling began to progress towards irritation. _She_ wasn't the one who had transformed into a giant green muscle man and tried to crush _him_. She catalogued every time she took a seat near his and he stiffened or leaned away, every time she had an empty seat near her and he went out of his way to select another, and every time he suddenly remembered an important task when he saw her coming.

With her first-hand surveillance exhausted, she finally resolved to face the problem head on.

Bruce wandered into the vast, tiered sitting room one morning, the empty coffee cup in his hand proclaiming his reason for finally leaving his lab. He had his head dropped almost onto his chest as he concentrated on the newspaper in his hand, so he nearly ran into Natasha before he saw her.

"Natasha," he said, looking flustered. "I"m sorry, should have been looking where I was going-"

"You're avoiding me," she began without preamble. No need to dress up an ugly conversation. "I want to know why."

He stared at her for a long moment and finally sighed heavily, setting down his mug and his paper. He pulled his glasses off next and started rubbing at them with the lapels of his lab coat. "That obvious, huh?"

"Yes. That obvious."

He folded up the legs of his glasses and held them in one hand as he finally met her gaze. "I thought you might feel more comfortable if I kept my distance. I'm sorry if I offended you."

She wondered how many times one man could say he was sorry. Then she wondered how many times one man could surprise her.

"You don't need to worry about me, Bruce," she said once the silence had become a little long. "You don't scare me."

"I seem to recall a gun pointed in my face when I raised my voice at you…" he lifted an eyebrow at her, but his eyes didn't hold any malice. Her lips twitched.

"You don't scare me anymore," she amended. "How about that?"

"Good," said Bruce with a smile - the tired one this time. "I don't want to."

He refilled his coffee and disappeared back into his lab. Alone in the sunlit sitting room, Natasha ran through her mental files of every time Bruce had pulled away from her. When she filtered it all through Bruce's confession, the picture it presented was different. His careful consideration, while misguided, was… bizarrely moving. She wasn't used to the concern of others, particularly not spectacled scientists with kind streaks.

Inside the void that always ached when she visited Clint's family, she almost felt something shift.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha Romanoff was never caught off guard - with one incredible exception. For such a big guy, Bruce Banner managed to sneak up on her. (A short story tracing the relationship from inauspicious start to possible finish.) Brutasha/BruceNat.

After a few easy days of hanging out almost like normal, non-avenging people, Tony finally made a grand appearance. "Hey, guys," he announced as he strode into the sitting room where Clint, Steve, Thor, Bruce, and Natasha waited. "Did you miss me?" He climbed the stairs to the second tier of the enormous sitting area and plopped down onto the sofa Bruce occupied. "I love the Sit Pit," he sighed, gesturing expansively at the circle of sofas and chairs that centered around two coffee tables. "It's so cozy. Missed you, Bruce." He bumped his shoulder and Bruce looked awkward. It was just like old times already.

"So," said Steve, managing to sound polite but firm, "why the meeting? Not that I don't enjoy the view and the dinner parties… but I think you've got more on your mind than calling together Earth's Mightiest Drinking Buddies."

Tony snorted and finally pulled off his sunglasses. "You're absolutely right, Captain. Besides, you can't even get drunk." Steve looked irritated already and Natasha sent him a wry smile. He returned it.

"You want to go after Hydra," Natasha commented, tired of Tony's theatrics.

Tony deflated a little, but lost none of his energy as he stood up and left the Sit Pit.

"Correct as usual, Agent Romanoff," he called over his shoulder. "Follow me to the lab and I'll show you what I've got in mind."

"The lab?" Bruce spoke for the first time. "Which one?"

* * *

They converged on Tony's personal lab because it had, as Tony put it, "the best display system in the world." Before long Jarvis had dimmed the lights and Natasha found herself watching an orange-tinted holographic projection that displayed a world map with dozens of glowing dots scattered across its surface. They blinked like angry fireflies.

Standing between Clint and Steve, Natasha examined the map and waited for Tony's explanation. Next to her, Steve looked a little lost - as he always did in the face of technology - but Natasha didn't have the heart to laugh at him. His confusion was always colored with sadness over all that he had missed, and she was a little too familiar with the sensation of regret to be able to make light of it. Across the lab, Tony was tinkering with a display panel and Bruce hovered beside him, his glasses flashing in the orange light. Bruce looked a little lost himself, his eyes slightly unfocused and his jaw slack. Only his tightly knit brows gave away the intensity of his concentration as he stared in fascination. White lab coat, glasses, an intense preoccupation with technology, a history of questionable experiments, and the accidental creation of a monster - she wondered if he had always been this much of a stereotypical mad scientist.

Tony interrupted her thoughts. "These," he said as he moved to stand in the center of the display and spread his arms wide, "are Hydra bases." He caught each of their eyes in turn as he paced. "Since S.H.I.E.L.D. is gone, Loki's scepter is M.I.A., and we just discovered that nobody in the entire world can be trusted, because, you know, Hydra, I thought that we were the best choice to take them down." He halted in front of Steve. "What do you say, Captain?"

Natasha's eyes strayed from Steve's troubled expression beside her and landed on Bruce's face. Even divided by a sea of swirling orange light, she could clearly see his uncertainty… and his ever-present fear. Beside her, Steve finally spoke.

"I say it's about time the Avengers assembled."

* * *

After their course was set, the following days were full of brainstorming sessions. Only Steve and Clint's insistence that they take the occasional meal and sleep breaks stopped Tony from setting a grueling pace of all-nighters and working through meals. Bruce seemed to exist in a permanent loop between his lab and Tony's; Natasha wasn't sure she had seen either of them outside a lab for the last few days. Putting aside the troubling thought of when they found the time to shower - or, even more horrifying, _if_ they found the time at all - she kept her own schedule regardless of what Tony said and came in to help with planning whenever she could. On the third day of what Tony gleefully called "summer camp," Natasha arrived in Tony's lab to find Bruce glaring at his fellow scientist. Something like trepidation squirmed in her stomach and she ruthlessly crushed every unpleasant memory stirred up by the angry look on his face. She focused on the present situation instead.

"What's going on, Bruce?" she asked in a carefully calm voice.

"Oh, nothing," he ground out and the tension in his voice worried her more than his stormy expression had. "Tony's just lost his mind."

She turned to the man in question who was the picture of innocence as he sat at a desk and munched blueberries.

"What did you do now?" she asked flatly, eager to clear the storm building on Bruce's face.

"I just suggested the best plan yet," he defended. "The Code Green Protocol."

"Three guesses what that might be," Bruce muttered darkly.

Natasha felt a headache coming on.

* * *

Code Green was quickly shot down when a team discussion ended with everyone except Tony supporting Bruce's decision to stay out of combat.

"I'm on your side," Natasha whispered as Tony argued with Steve yet again. "But if another alien invasion happens, you better be ready to go green."

Bruce grinned at her. "Okay. Aliens are the exception."

They started targeting Hydra bases sans Hulk. Bruce stayed on the comm line with them during strikes and managed their technical needs. He also displayed the patience of a saint every time that Tony began to enumerate the ways the Hulk could have been helpful during each mission. "That bunker was just the worst. If only there was a giant green combatant that could have busted it up for me…" Bruce usually pretended not to hear.

During off hours, Tony and Bruce holed up in their labs and worked on a project they mysteriously called "Veronica." Judging by the apologetic looks Bruce sent her whenever Tony used the name and failed to explain the meaning, she thought that Tony must have been the one to choose it. Bruce seemed like a much more straightforward type… and not the sort to name weapons after ex-girlfriends, which she assumed was precisely what Stark had done. Not for the first time, she felt a mixture of admiration and pity for Pepper Potts.

* * *

During one of their all-night "Veronica" sessions - a science sleepover as she and Clint had taken to calling them - Natasha finally tired of the mystery and decided to crash the party.

"Having fun at your science sleepover?" she asked as she strode into Tony's lab and settled on a chair.

"Sorry, no girls allowed. Didn't you see the sign on our treehouse?" Tony fired back immediately, barely looking up from the schematic for something big and intimidating that floated on the clear screen of one of his flat monitors. Bruce looked somewhere between amused and pained.

"I've never been one for rules," she replied smoothly.

"Boy/girl parties are no fun," muttered Tony, already sinking back into his haze of concentration. He fell into silence except for a string of low comments to Jarvis that changed the schematic in front of him.

"Did you have a question?" asked Bruce suddenly from behind one of the monitors. The displays were minimized into the various corners of the see-through screen, so she could clearly see his trademark look of glasses, dark smudges under his eyes, and slightly mussed brown hair. He looked like he had been working for days, which she supposed he had. "Tony's not always good at explaining things, especially when he's in the zone. But if you have a question, I'll try to answer it," he offered simply. Natasha glanced at the gibberish that was dancing at the corners of the screen and raised an eyebrow. "And I'll even answer in English - not scientist-ese," Bruce added with a smile.

"Well in that case," Natasha started, climbing out of her seat and choosing a rolling chair in front of Bruce's screen. "What are you two designing in here?"

Bruce's smile faded a little. "Possibly a safety valve for me… possibly just another spectacular failure." He came around the monitor to stand next to her and tapped a few images. Spinning 3-D schematics erupted across the screen, displaying a satellite which burst into pieces and fell to earth to form a colossal cage. Suddenly, she understood.

"Ah," she said simply.

"Yeah," he sighed. "Containment has been tried before," he couldn't quite hide his grimace, "but this might actually have a chance." She felt a little ill and, judging by the gray cast of his skin, he felt the same. Distraction, Natasha thought, was always the best medicine.

"How does the targeting system work?" she asked, startling him out of his dark reverie. "Uh…" he began and she could almost see the gears start to whir in his head as he rattled off the particulars. She formulated a long list of questions and didn't give him time to think deeply for the next few minutes. His explanations were concise and easy to grasp; he had a way of breaking down complex concepts without condescension that was very refreshing, especially for someone who had spent time as Tony Stark's put-upon assistant. She put the thought of that particularly unpleasant undercover work out of her head.

"You should have been a teacher," she commented lightly when she finally ran out of questions.

Bruce laughed and she was glad to see that the shadows behind his eyes had disappeared. "I'm not sure I could handle a classroom of students. The Other Guy wouldn't like their attitudes." And just like that, the shadows were back.

Natasha suppressed a grimace; she had walked right into that one. "Well… every classroom needs strong discipline," she salvaged.

Bruce stared at her for a moment and then burst into a laugh more genuine than anything she'd ever seen from him. After a moment, she laughed too.

Across the lab, Tony finally woke from his work coma and turned to stare at them. Natasha saw the moment that his confusion narrowed into suspicion. He started to walk over, purpose in his steps.

"Thanks for the lesson, Dr. Banner," she called as she beat a hasty retreat to the door. Sidestepping Tony Stark was becoming a hobby.

"Sure," said Bruce, and she could imagine the look of confusion on his face as she left. "Maybe you can pay me back with some spy lessons…"

She paused in the doorway. "Bruce, I'm not sure that being inconspicuous is your calling," she answered with a grin.

"That's mean," he replied, still looking puzzled, but he was smiling at least.

"Bruce…" started Tony, and Natasha knew it was her cue to leave. The doors started to slide closed behind her.

"Bruce Banner," said Tony Stark in a voice that sounded like nothing so much as a teenage girl, "Were you _flirting_?"

The doors slid shut on Bruce's comically horrified expression and it took considerable willpower to avoid succumbing to laughter on the spot.

* * *

Watching the bromance between Tony and Bruce became another hobby during Natasha's ever-lengthening stint at Avengers Tower. They were so different, but they fit together like the gears of a finely-tuned machine (a metaphor she knew they would both appreciate).

After her time posing as Tony Stark's assistant and surveilling the man's life for even longer than that, Natasha knew a lot about what made Iron Man tick. She knew that he was all swagger and bravado on the surface, but that there was significant trauma lurking behind his perpetual sunglasses and finely-trimmed beard. She knew about his daddy issues and she had seen the reports of his time fighting the Mandarin. In New York, she'd had a front seat when he had nearly killed himself while guiding the nuke heading for New York City through a wormhole to the far reaches of space instead. In short, Tony suffered from varying degrees of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. And he was not eager to admit to the fact.

She saw his nervous energy, and the fear that occasionally flickered behind his eyes. Pepper Potts, Tony's former assistant and current girlfriend, was the only thing that calmed the wild look and pulled Tony's gaze from his own navel. At least until Tony met Bruce.

Bruce had a similar effect on Tony; he was the counterweight that tempered his more ridiculous flights of fancy, but seized his feasible ideas and built on them. After a lifetime of reading people, Natasha could easily see that Tony was a race car of a man who spit out ideas at the speed of light and was forever leaving people in the dust. Bruce, however, could keep up with him. He could catch Tony's curveballs and even throw them back. Natasha noticed how Tony's body language relaxed and stilled when he and Bruce went to work in the endless labs of the Tower. He smiled more genuinely and even held himself differently. Bruce had a steadying effect.

Natasha wondered if she and Clint were the same way. Friends brought out the best in each other, and steadied the other, he always said.

She wondered distantly if she was Bruce's friend. With so many of her anchors gone after the destruction of S.H.I.E.L.D., and her nightmares a thing of the past, she thought she might like to be.

* * *

She had the opportunity to behave like a friend sooner than she expected. During the next team debriefing on the most recently dismantled Hydra base, the Code Green issue came to a head.

"No," said Bruce flatly after Tony wheedled him again about joining them in the field. "It's too much of a risk. You guys are fine without me." But she could hear the strain of the ongoing argument in his voice; he sounded like he might actually give in. Tony smelled the blood in the water.

"Bruce, I know you're worried about hurting someone, and I get it, really I do… What if we had a safety valve? What if we could control when you change back into you?" he pressed.

Bruce ran a hand through his hair and sighed heavily. "You think I haven't tried that?" The bitterness in his tone lodged in his chest like ragged shards of glass. She had started to hate it when he slipped into his weary tone of resignation. He didn't deserve to live under such a weight all the time - a weight that a lesser man wouldn't have bothered to carry at all. She hated how he hurt himself bearing up under so much guilt. Guilt was such a crushing burden.

Tony surged forward like the unstoppable force he was. "Let's find a trigger - something to catalyze your transformation…"

"Like what?" Bruce asked in exasperation. "This is a dead end, Tony…"

"So we'll come up with something!" Tony continued, the wheels spinning almost visibly behind his eyes as he worked on the problem. "Let's go to the lab and try a few things."

Natasha recognized Tony's I'm-going-to-try-something-crazy look and she saw Bruce's face turn wary as he recognized it too. "I've turned this issue inside out trying to find an antidote to the transformation," he protested tiredly. "There isn't one. The process can't be reversed chemically." He shrank in on himself and his eyes turned hollow with memory. "At least not without a price I am completely unwilling to pay." Tony's determined expression hadn't changed, but Bruce's was rapidly shifting toward despair. She made a decision.

"Maybe the science isn't the answer," she interjected suddenly, drawing the gaze of the entire team. Bruce's tired eyes flashed to hers. "I've got a couple of ideas. We'll talk it through and get back to the group."

Tony looked ready to protest, but Bruce had already moved to stand beside Natasha. "Sounds good to me," he said with an apologetic shrug in Tony's direction and a grateful smile in hers.

* * *

"Thank you," Bruce said as soon as the elevator doors closed behind them.

"Don't thank me yet. Just because I bailed you out doesn't mean that Stark doesn't have a point."

" _What?_ Natasha… you of all people should understand why I can't-"

"Me of all people? Are we still talking about this?" she jabbed the button that would take them to the roof and leaned against the elevator wall to level a glare at him.

He wilted just a little under her gaze, but she knew it wasn't from lack of conviction; Bruce Banner was just a master of avoiding conflict.

"Look," she started again in a gentler tone. "I know you don't want to deal with this. But you should." He pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "Bruce, we could use you out there."

"I've been helping here," he said quietly. "What you could use is the Other Guy."

"If that's the way you want to look at it."

He sighed and slid his glasses into the pocket of his lab coat. She saw his answer in the weary slump of his shoulders before he spoke. "Fine. We can talk about it. But no promises… My conscience can't hold much more." The elevator pinged as they reached the roof.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bruce's "At least not without a price I am completely unwilling to pay" line was a reference to _The Incredible Hulk_ , a movie which is technically canon... but negligibly so, in my book. In that movie, Bruce Banner was a different sort of guy (and a very different sort of actor lol) and he actually did discover an antidote to his transformations, but wasn't able to use it longterm because of the chance that others might abuse his gamma irradiated blood. It was a well-founded fear after the whole Abomination in New York thing. He also struggled with keeping his pulse below a certain level in _TIH_ , a concern that no longer seems to be an issue by the time we get to _Avengers_. So, when push comes to shove, I just half-ignore _TIH_ , assume that Bruce got his heart rate issues under control sometime between movies (along with his facial transplant lol), and wish that Mark Ruffalo had a solo Hulk film.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha Romanoff was never caught off guard - with one incredible exception. For such a big guy, Bruce Banner managed to sneak up on her. (A short story tracing the relationship from inauspicious start to possible finish.) Brutasha/BruceNat.

"I know you've had experiences of partial control during your transformations… tell me about those times." Natasha sat cross-legged at the edge of the few square yards of space that served as the tip of Avengers Tower. Protected from the wind by a raised wall that would be waist high if she was standing, she and Bruce pressed their backs against the wall and listened to the wind roaring overhead and the screech of traffic far below.

"I always retain a little bit of awareness - after the fact, at any rate - but the times that you're talking about… they were triggered by people." Bruce was staring at nothing, his eyes unfocused. She wondered if he was trying to remember or trying to avoid it.

"People. Okay, that's a good start. What people?" She kept her voice low, calm, and encouraging. It was a manipulation tactic, but it was also usually effective. He blinked and glanced knowingly at her.

"Should I lie back on the couch, Dr. Romanoff?" he quipped tiredly.

She flushed at being so casually called out on what should be impossible to detect. "Sorry," she muttered, but she was mostly sorry that he had read her so easily. He was aware of the fact if his knowing smile was any indication.

"It's okay. Let's just hope that I won't need mental dissection to get to the answers…" He slid his eyes shut. "I said 'people' before, but that's not strictly accurate. There was only one person who ever inspired the Other Guy to hold back." He pulled in a breath that snagged somewhere in his chest and Natasha waited.

"It was Betty," he managed after a moment, looking like he had a colossal headache (although she knew that wasn't the source of the pain he was feeling). "Betty Ross."

She remained silent for a moment and he finally opened his eyes and turned toward her. "You don't have to pretend that you don't know who that is. I'm sure you've read all my files."

Feeling vaguely ashamed for a reason she couldn't quite identify, Natasha nodded. "Your girlfriend."

"Ex-girlfriend," he corrected tonelessly. She wondered if what he was trying to hide was anger or sadness. "That was a long time ago."

"And she triggered your transformation?"

"No," he shook his head and his eyes unfocused again as he stared at nothing. "But she did motivate the Other Guy to run off and stop destroying things, so that's something at least." He smiled, but there was no humor in it.

"The Other Guy saved Tony in New York," she commented slowly, adopting Bruce's term for the Hulk. "So he responds to people that you know, people that you care about."

Bruce nodded. "It seems that way, but I've never tried to confirm it. He's… he's too destructive to let out for a test run."

"So anger triggers your transformation into the Other Guy-"

"Don't forget extreme stress or stimulation," Bruce added with a hollow note in his voice.

"-yes. Negative emotions - strong ones."

"Right."

"And it's love that tempers the transformation, even if it can't reverse it. Positive emotions." Natasha smiled with satisfaction. "I may just make a psychiatrist yet."

"I could have told you all this," Bruce protested, looking confused. "Why are you excited?"

"Because we might finally have the key to 'untriggering' you."

For just a moment, his haunted expression melted into something that bordered on amused. "Very scientific terminology," he commented lightly.

"Thank you, Dr. Banner," she replied with a lofty air. "But from one colleague to another… you're not that hard to diagnose."

She smirked when he looked vaguely affronted.

* * *

They took to meeting each day for a few minutes of discussion over the thorny problem of Bruce's transformations. Natasha had suggested the short length of the meetings; Bruce had the unusual tendency to shut down when they were prolonged. Most people opened up in response to kindness and quality time, but Bruce seemed to only grow more aware of the problem pulsing in his DNA and his openness always withered in the end. His hope was only as good as the length of time he spent not thinking about the potentially disastrous consequences of their probable failure - and he never stopped thinking about how dangerous he was for long. She opted for short bursts of brainstorming and discussion to achieve the ideal level of cooperation from him.

She also hated seeing the moment his optimism smoldered and faded into ash. Avoiding that was worth a little inefficiency.

"Bruce," she began on the third day they met over breakfast on the raised level of the sitting room, "Your 'untrigger'… it's going to have to be a person."

His eyes tightened, but he didn't look surprised - only resigned. "I was afraid you'd say that," he muttered, turning to stare out the glass walls at the brilliance of the sunlit city. "But I think you're right." He took a deep breath and she couldn't tell if the slump in his shoulders as he exhaled was defeat or relief. "I also think that this is where our journey ends. No one would be able to safely test our theory."

Defeat, then.

Natasha never accepted defeat, and if she could help it, Bruce wouldn't either. Not today.

"What about Betty?"

"Absolutely not," he ground out, and she saw his clenched fists through the glass of the table. "Under no circumstances will I drag her back into this… she's had to put up with enough for a lifetime. I won't do it."

Privately, Natasha remembered reading that Betty had married in the past couple of years and that her surveillance detail had been scaled back because it was unlikely that Bruce would resurface in her life. The stiff set of his shoulders suddenly read a little differently. Natasha abruptly felt very tired.

"Fair enough," she said softly. Bruce relaxed and the hollow look she hated replaced the angry one.

"Thank you," he replied simply.

She nodded. "What about Tony? The Big Guy liked him enough to save him from falling to his death." His eyebrows lifted at her newest name for the Hulk.

"I don't remember that very well, but it would be too risky for Tony," he said after a moment. "The _Other Guy_ ," he corrected lightly, "doesn't like guns."

He always sidestepped any attempt to cast a positive light on that Other Guy. She was determined that he should reconsider that; even the darkest parts of the Hulk's powers - the lack of control - was useful in the right setting. But that was an argument for another day.

Besides, she had just come to a very important, very terrifying conclusion. Her heart clenched, just a little.

"Okay," she agreed in a tone that was much too close to a whisper. "She drew in a steadying breath and aimed for more self-assurance. "Then I'll do it." She hit the mark.

Bruce, predictably, sputtered for a moment before adamantly insisting that the idea was insane.

"What are you thinking…" he finally forced out, shoving his chair back from the table and standing in a fit of outrage. "Natasha, he almost-" he paused and took a shaky breath, " _I_ almost killed you. You can't be serious."

"I am," she said flatly.

"What about all that stuff you said about the Other Guy liking Tony and Betty? He tried to kill you the last time he saw you!"

"No, the last time he saw me, we fought aliens together. It was good times."

"This isn't funny."

"I never said it was."

He paced for a moment and threw his hands in the air. "Why does no one understand how dangerous this is? How dangerous I am?"

"Maybe it's because we know you better than you think," she replied gently. It was a nudge to sit down, to just consider…

He sat down and swept a hand across his forehead. "This is insane."

She shrugged. "The best ideas often are."

He looked ready to protest, so she cut him off. "And that's my experience, not just a sell tactic," she finished with a tiny smile.

He laughed, finally. It was dry and carried the air of a man giving up, but it was better than his previous rejection and she would take what she could get.

"What do you say, Bruce?" she prompted with the infinite care of a jeweler nudging a gem into its setting.

He leaned back in his chair and blew out a long breath. "We'll try it."

"Good call-" she started, but he raised a finger and she waited.

"On my terms," he finished in a steely tone. "I have some conditions."

This was going to be interesting.

* * *

Bruce insisted that Veronica be ready before any trials were run. Tony was thrilled to hear about the test run and he threw himself into finishing the containment system. Bruce worked with no less dedication, but far less excitement. After a few days of keeping extremely unhealthy hours, Tony and Bruce emerged at last, wearing identical expressions of exhaustion. Tony, however, still managed to have a mischievous gleam in his eyes as the Avengers filed into his lab. Natasha stood close to Bruce and gave him an encouraging smile. He didn't return it.

"May I present," Tony began with an indecent amount of energy in his voice for a man who had all but given up sleeping, "Veronica." A holographic model of a multi-pronged satellite appeared to his right and spun in a slow circle. "The satellite is all set for any emergencies. We'll be able to contain the Hulk if anything goes wrong."

"Or at least hold him long enough to get Natasha out on the quinjet," Bruce commented darkly. His face looked haggard in the harsh light of Jarvis' holographic displays.

"Let's not count our worst case scenarios before they hatch," Tony returned smoothly. "Besides, there's more than one part to this backup plan. What do we have behind door number two, Jarvis?" he asked, gesturing to his left.

"The Hulkbuster," Jarvis answered. A second holographic display materialized, detailing an enormous suit of armor that looked like the Iron Man suit on steroids. A lot of steroids.

"Yes," said Tony with far too much enthusiasm. "It's a super suit that I built to withstand the Hulk's attacks. It can also redirect him and even relocate him if need be. It's pretty nifty, if I do say so myself,"

Tony sobered when Bruce looked grim. "It's going to be okay, Bruce," he said seriously.

"Yes," Natasha agreed. "Safety valves galore." She tried to inject her voice with more confidence than she really felt. "We'll be fine."

"I'm not worried about me," Bruce said quietly.

"Okay," Natasha assented. "Then _I'll_ be fine."

Bruce smiled. It was the sad one.

* * *

In Natasha's experience, confidence was often a choice as much as a feeling. She _chose_ to believe that Bruce Banner's angry alter ego wouldn't kill her. When her old nightmares suddenly resurfaced with a vengeance, she was forced to admit that her subconscious mind wasn't so optimistic.

She found herself wandering into the sitting room in the darkest hours of the night, gravitating toward open spaces and the city lights that lit the room in a washed out parody of daylight. It was pale and stark, and the shadows were deep in the corners, but the glass walls admitted the light at least. And she could catch a glimpse of the stars. She had always loved a good view.

On the second night of waking up with her heart pounding and a mental scream dying on her lips, she wandered into the sitting room, sank onto one of the sofas that faced the nearest glass wall, and wrapped the silence around her like a warm blanket. She slumped until her head was pillowed on the armrest. The deep velvet darkness outside meant that it wasn't long until daylight. Her eyes drifted shut.

Quiet footsteps erupted like a sonic boom against the silent soundscape of the sitting room and her eyes snapped open again.

Her training quickened her heart rate and she tamped down on the reflexive urge to slide into a crouch on the floor and prepare to defend herself. She was safe here, she reminded herself, nightmares or not. Her racing blood proved that her body didn't believe her. She forced herself to stay where she was.

She recognized Bruce's footsteps before the man himself appeared in the moonlight to her left. He always shuffled a little bit and hesitated. Never comfortable in his own skin, never certain that he was where he was supposed to be. Somewhere in the back of her mind she registered that that was sad, but she was too preoccupied with other things to really feel it. After all, the man of her nightmares was paying a visit.

She was saved from having to risk startling him when he noticed her first. "Natasha?" he whispered, even though they were alone in a room large enough that their voices would fade before the rest of the building could hear them. "Yeah," she said, irritated when her voice accurately reflected how worn and tired she felt. Banner and the Other Guy had a habit of causing too many cracks in her usually perfect facades. It was annoying.

"Sorry, I didn't know anybody was in here," he took a step back.

"It's a big room, Bruce. Come on in." She gestured around at the empty circle of sofas and chairs. He sat on the couch several cushion-lengths away from her feet. His nervous energy was making her tense; she sat up, abandoning the idea of sleep. "Trouble sleeping?" she asked when he seemed reluctant to break the silence. Always afraid he was intruding, she supposed distantly.

"Yeah," he said in a quiet voice. She could feel the current of tension flowing under his words. For a scientist with a bad poker face and an anger problem that could be seen from space, his ability to mask what was going on in his mind was _annoying_. She decided to break that ice and see what was underneath.

"What's on your mind?" she prodded gently. Always best to start slow and easy when trying to encourage an open response. Bruce, determined to be annoying it would seem, just shook his head.

Natasha felt a scalding flash of irritation that quickly evaporated and left only weariness. She had no energy for mind games and Bruce was terrible at playing them anyway. She picked through her mental toolkit and finally selected the tactic that she seldom used: the truth.

"I had a nightmare," she admitted. She hated that admissions always stung on the way out. Like pus out of a festering wound, she thought grimly.

Bruce's face softened from the stony sphinx he had been a moment before and he finally leaned back against the couch. "What about?" he asked.

"The Other Guy." She watched his expression carefully. She expected the horror that washed across his face in the pale glow of the moon; she didn't expect the way it shifted and settled into hurt.

"Why did you agree to this plan, Natasha?" There was frustration in his voice, and something else - pain. Always the end result of honesty, she thought distantly to herself.

"Because I think it will work," she replied, and meant it. Now if her dreams would just get with the program…

Bruce sighed heavily; she watched all the fight leak out of him as he stared out the glass walls at the sparkling lights beyond.

"It's a great view," he said absently. She recognized his glazed look of concentration even in the half light and left the silence undisturbed as he gathered his thoughts.

"You know what's funny, Natasha?" He glanced at her for a moment and the moonlit half of his face was lined with weariness. She doubted very much that what he was about to say was funny at all. He turned away again.

"My nightmares are about you, too." His voice was so defeated and suddenly she understood.

He was waking up to dreams of losing control and killing her.

She knew she should feel angry or horrified or frightened… but she was moved. There it was again - Bruce always worrying for her. Her memory flickered and she saw his dispassionate expression long ago in the shanty in India as she moved at her fastest speed to point a gun in his face. It was a move that had always inspired fear or at least shock in everyone who found themselves on the receiving end - except for him. He had stayed calm and quiet and worried for everyone except himself. Including her, the woman pointing the gun. Even after all this time, she was still impressed.

In fact, sitting on the couch in the moonlight in New York, she was actually amazed. To be the one someone worried for instead of about - it was like wandering into another universe where up was down and discovering that you never really cared for gravity in the first place. She smiled at him in the pale mix of earthbound and celestial lights. It took a long moment, but he finally looked back.

His face was the picture of disbelief. "What are you smiling about?" he asked in a hilariously disgruntled tone. Her smile only widened.

"I appreciate your concern, Bruce," she said simply. "But these nightmares are telling me exactly one thing." He stared at her in confusion.

"We're both idiots," she declared. He smiled a little at that and Natasha finally felt the chill of her nightmares slip away. She stood and crossed the distance he had put between them. "We're going to do this test and we're going to succeed," she said as she took the seat beside his. "So have a little faith in me, Bruce. And more importantly, have a little faith in yourself."

"Okay," he answered with the uncertain inflection of a question. He looked a little shell-shocked. "Okay," he repeated more firmly.

"So," he said suddenly, and she was glad to hear his usual easy tone replace the icy, nightmare-addled one. "I don't think I can go back to sleep anytime soon… Tony says there's a TV in here, but I can never find it. Umm…" he continued, "do you want to play cards?" Natasha laughed.

They played simple card games through the darkest hours of the night and Natasha found that she enjoyed it. She enjoyed Steve's confused expression when he walked in on a game of War at the crack of dawn even more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't for the life of me figure out what the tip of Avengers Tower actually looks like. All the pictures are wide shots from waaaaaay too far away, so I improvised lol. There's got to be some sort of roof access, right?
> 
> As for all the Betty mentions, I worked from what we saw in _The Incredible Hulk_ yet again. To think that my least favorite MCU movie would end up being such a source of inspiration... or a source of information, at least. Since Betty has pretty much dropped off the movie radar, and since Brutasha is now a thing, I'm assuming that she and Bruce just didn't work out after _TIH_. After all, he did pull his disappearing act at the end of that movie too. (Darn it, Bruce!) I think it's reasonable to assume that Bruce felt that their relationship, which he never meant to rekindle without fixing his Hulk problem, wasn't feasible and after _TIH_ they were no longer in contact. Betty moved on once before, I think it's safe to assume that she would do so again. Not to hate on her or anything! I think I would move on too if my mutated boyfriend dumped me by way of running off without a word not once but twice. Oh, Bruce.
> 
> Finally, we come to the Veronica/Hulkbuster thing. At first I was thinking that they were two separate things, but Veronica supplied replacement parts for Tony's Hulkbuster suit, so I decided to work from the assumption that the cage part of Veronica and the Hulkbuster suit were both up in the satellite, ready for deployment anywhere, anytime. I can't see Tony packing the Hulkbuster in the quinjet lol. If only I had the DVD, then I could actually know this for sure without having to operate off of memory... ugh. Anyway, I decided to treat it as a two-for-the-price-of-one deal. Veronica is the satellite; she deploys the cage and the Hulkbuster as needed as a two-pronged containment plan, at least in my little canon-compliant world.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha Romanoff was never caught off guard - with one incredible exception. For such a big guy, Bruce Banner managed to sneak up on her. (A short story tracing the relationship from inauspicious start to possible finish.) Brutasha.

"You've got to stop worrying, Bruce," Natasha said a few days later. She had lost count of how many times she had spoken some variation of those words during the last few days. Not that it mattered; they had very little effect.

"I'll stop worrying when tomorrow ends and you're not dead," he muttered. He stood stiffly and glanced at the the clock that hung above the bar in the sitting room.

"I'm touched," she answered (and deep down she actually was), "But your anxiety isn't going to help with the test."

"And what will help?"

"Positive rapport," she replied, relishing the way Bruce's tension slid away when he was surprised. His shoulders went slack and his fists unclenched.

"What?" he asked uncertainly.

"Bruce Banner, you and I are going to hang out tonight." His look of shock was becoming more comical with every passing moment. "We're going to have so much fun that the Other Guy won't feel violent tomorrow when he sees me - he'll feel like joining the party."

"I'm not sure that this is a sound strategy…" Bruce tried, but he was smiling.

"You have a better idea?" she countered.

He paused thoughtfully. "I guess not."

"Then stop complaining and make yourself useful. Get the board games. Oh, and Bruce," she held up a tiny, black remote control. "I found the TV." She pressed the button in the center and an enormous Stark-sized projection screen slid up from the floor.

He gave his smallest smile as he turned away to hunt through the game closet Tony had insisted was necessary. Natasha wasn't discouraged at all by his subdued response. She had discovered that when it came to Bruce Banner, the smallest details spoke volumes. He might be reluctant, but his smile was the genuine one.

* * *

"What are we watching?"

"You tell me, Bruce. You're the man of the hour… what will put you-" _and the Other Guy_ was the unspoken subtext "-in a good mood?"

Bruce didn't care to play along with her sugarcoating routine. He was annoyingly straightforward sometimes. "The Other Guy doesn't care much for movies," he said tightly.

Actually he was annoyingly straightforward all the time, Natasha decided. She sighed. His eyes snapped to hers and he let out a weary breath. "Sorry," he said softly. "Okay, good mood movies… I don't know… what do you like?"

Natasha blinked at him. "Bruce, will you just pick a movie?"

"Okay, but if you don't like it, we can watch something else." He pulled the laptop they had plugged into the projector into his lap. He tapped and scrolled for a moment before she saw his expression relax as he made his choice. She powered up the projector and a black and white title card that proclaimed "Charlie Chaplin in City Lights" filled the screen. Bruce paused it immediately.

"If you don't like older movies, I'm happy to watch something else…" he trailed off as he noticed her puzzled expression. "What?"

"You like Charlie Chaplin movies?" she asked.

"I guess so, yeah," he replied uncertainly. "I don't actually get much time for movie watching. I loved these when I was a kid."

"I've never seen them," she said and her voice sank into a whisper without her permission. "They're funny, right?"

"Yes. But poignant, too."

"And that puts you in a good mood?" she asked, incredulous.

He shrugged. "A better mood."

"Alright." She nodded and he started the movie. The opening music played - lively themes colored by the jazz of the early twentieth century - and Natasha relaxed against the couch. Bruce moved to sit beside her. The music flowed into a theme much more romantic and tragic and Natasha leaned over to whisper to him.

"If this makes me cry, Banner, I'm going to break that projector and then I'm coming for you."

Bruce laughed. "Natasha, I don't think even Charlie Chaplin could make you cry." They sank into silence as the movie began. Natasha tried to ignore the way his words pierced her like so many splinters and itched uncomfortably beneath her skin.

* * *

One Chaplin movie had turned into several (Natasha had to admit that they were pretty good), and it was several hours past midnight. Empty plates and glasses were on the tables, along with a pile of untouched boardgames. Bruce's eyes drooped as he slumped against the couch. Natasha was trying to decide whether to wake him or just toss a blanket over him when he spoke.

"You don't have to do this," he said. His eyes were closed, but his jaw was clenched. He was awake.

"Bruce, we all decided-"

"It might not work."

"But it might. And that's a chance I'm willing to take." He just sighed.

"You're messing up our good vibes, here," she reprimanded lightly. "Maybe you should go to bed." She glanced out the glass walls at the inky black of the sky. "The sun's getting real low."

Beside her, Bruce laughed tiredly. "I guess it is." He sat up, and rubbed his face with his hands. They stared at the twinkling lights of the city and the lightless sky above in silence. Bruce finally stood. He turned and offered her a hand. She took it and pulled herself to her feet in front of him. "Long day tomorrow," he commented, still holding her hand loosely in his own. She could feel his pulse under her fingertips. "I'll see you…" he glanced at the watch on his free hand, "…later today."

"Until then." She gave him a smile and gripped his hand firmly for a moment in reassurance. He let go before she did. The first hint of sunrise bled into the dark canopy of the sky as they drifted off to bed.

* * *

After a few hours of uneasy sleep, Natasha, Bruce, Steve, Clint, Tony, and Thor all piled into the quinjet and flew into the large tract of uninhabited Canadian land they had chosen for this portion of the experiment. Tony fiddled with the screens displaying Veronica and the Hulkbuster, tweaking settings and priming all the systems. Thor sat quietly, his eyes locked on Bruce; Natasha knew that Steve had asked him along because he was the only one on the team who could physically face the Hulk if things went badly. Steve and Clint came along to see the process through - and for moral support. Clint sat beside her for the whole flight and told her funny stories in a low voice. Sitting in silence and staring at nothing, Bruce looked as gray and unmoving as carved stone. She could almost see his despair like a wall around him.

She thought distantly about the fact that he was the most powerful person on the jet - and the most reluctant to fight. She had never in her life met someone so accomplished in violence who dreaded the ability like Bruce Banner did. He avoided fights to an extreme degree, not because he was weak or afraid, but because he knew he would win. He was always letting other people dictate what would happen, letting other people have control… It reminded her of the most delicate undercover missions of her Red Room days, the missions where it was imperative that a target remain alive and able to give information, even if you had to submit to capture and torture in order to accomplish that goal. If she had learned anything in those days, it was that it took a peculiar type of strength to let yourself be bound when the alternative was killing the one holding the rope.

She listened to Clint and watched Bruce as the hours crawled by. When they were thirty minutes out, Natasha moved to the seat beside his.

"Bruce," she began, keeping her voice soft and comforting, "It's going to be okay. And no matter what happens out there… I hope you know that I'm your friend." Genuine speeches were always difficult for her, but she felt somewhere deep down that any and all connection between them would be vital in the hours to come. Next to her, Bruce laughed bitterly.

"Friends?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "After our history?" Flashes of the Hulk's enraged face and her terror as she ran from the crashing footfalls behind her paraded through her mind. She let them pass and dissolve back into the hazy mist of memory. She shrugged the images off, and Bruce's disbelief along with it.

"All my best friendships begin with violence and the threat of imminent death," she said dismissively, glancing at Clint.

Bruce's wall of despair finally shattered as he grinned.

* * *

Tony landed the jet in a clearing and everyone dispersed to their positions. Steve and Clint remained onboard as Jarvis piloted the jet to a safe distance away: close enough to rush in for an emergency pickup, far enough to avoid being within the Hulk's line of sight. Thor took up a position out of sight behind the tree line, ready to assist. Tony suited up and joined him, prepared to summon the Hulkbuster armor at a moment's notice. Everything was set.

Bruce stood in the center of the grassy clearing that was surrounding by trees on all sides. There was a pond off to one side, with a stony bank covered in moss and scraggly grasses that struggled to free themselves from beneath the stones. He stared at the clear sky as he waited for the Avengers to signal him that they were set.

Natasha took up her position last. She stood a few yards away from Bruce, near a patch of white flowers with star-shaped blooms. It would have been beautiful if she hadn't felt so sick. She took a deep breath and let all the fear drift away when she exhaled.

"Natasha?" crackled Steve's voice over her earpiece. "Are you ready?"

"As ready as I'll ever be," she said flatly. Bruce turned toward her and smiled his sad smile. She smiled back, but she could feel that it was an especially weak effort.

Tony's voice came next. "I think we should all take a moment to appreciate the fact that Bruce doesn't have to worry about wardrobe malfunctions with the new super stretch pants we invented." Natasha was annoyed by his flippant attitude for a moment, but Bruce's pensive expression actually flickered with humor. "Thanks, Tony," he replied, staring up at the sky.

"Anytime, buddy," Tony answered.

"Alright, let's cut the chatter," Steve's voice rang in her ear again. "Dr. Banner, you're up."

Bruce's eyes were locked on hers when she saw him just _let go_. His features twisted and bulged and his eyes screwed shut as his shirt burst and fell away from him. Muscle swelled and rippled like ropes under the surface of his suddenly green skin. The pants, however, actually stretched to fit his newly-massive frame. In the quiet corner of her mind that wasn't screaming _danger_ , she was impressed by Tony's efforts. The rest of her brain was a chorus of alarms as the Hulk's height grew to match some of the smaller trees around them. His enormous face twisted with rage and he opened his startlingly green eyes. They were still locked onto hers.

But Bruce was gone.

Natasha felt a spike of terror drive itself straight through her heart. She kept very still and waited to gauge the Other Guy's reaction. His face twitched into an uncertain snarl as he stared. His heavy breathing filled the clearing as his eyes flicked away from her face and searched their surroundings. So he didn't consider her an immediate threat - good. The Other Guy coiled his muscles and looked as though he might sprint away. She couldn't let him disappear, so she acted on instinct.

"Hey, Big Guy," she called in the calmest voice she could manage. It came out a little more strained than she was hoping for. She was just glad she could force her dry throat to produce sounds at all.

The Big Guy in question whirled to face her, grunting and snorting as he sized her up. She could almost see him trying to decide whether or not she was hostile. She wasn't sure if he recognized her or not - he didn't exactly use his words.

She was still reeling from the fact that Bruce had disappeared from behind those eyes; she decided to try and coax him back out. "The sun's getting real low," she murmured just loud enough to be heard, repeating her words from the night before.

The words registered, that much she could tell. The Hulk listened and his brow twisted just a little. For a fraction of a second, she swore she could see Bruce flicker behind the green eyes. "That's right - it's me, Natasha." She took a single, tiny step closer. "Your friend."

The Hulk looked torn. He jerked his head away to look over his shoulder, then he turned back toward her. He lurched forward one step. Natasha knelt down. Reduce your size, reduce the threat. She pulled off her left glove and the freezing air prickled against her skin like a thousand needlepoints. She held up her hand, palm facing the Other Guy. She waited.

The Hulk stared at her and then at her hand. His eyes flicked down to his own hand, massive and as green as the grass underfoot. He took a few more steps in her direction. She forced herself to breathe deeply and slowly, but she could still feel the pounding of her heart as he grew nearer.

He closed the gap. Lifting his impossibly large hand, he pushed his palm almost against hers. Natasha absently noticed that her hand was shaking. She pressed it gently against his. He flinched at the contact and his lip curled threateningly, but he didn't move away or strike out. Emboldened by her success - or possibly drunk on terror - Natasha slid her open hand along his until she found his pulse point. He turned his palm up in response. She felt his pulse hammering like a drum under her fingertips. The Hulk had gone very still, staring at her with wide eyes. She couldn't read his expression like she could Bruce's, so she tried again to coax him out. "Come on out," she tried and the pulse under her fingertips jumped. She stared into his eyes and saw the almost-Bruce look flash again. "Come back to me," she prompted. She slid her fingertips over his palm, along the length of his fingers, and finally slid her hand away altogether.

The Hulk looked at her with a dazed expression and then abruptly stumbled and fell forward onto one knee. When his hands pressed against the grassy ground to support him, they had already begun to shrink. The Other Guy's frame shook and twisted as he shrank and paled, until it was Bruce that finally fell to the ground with a groan.

Natasha stared at his prone form for a moment before she finally realized that it had _worked_. "Bruce," she said carefully, worried about causing him to lapse back into that Other Guy. He lifted his head weakly. "Hi," he muttered, sounding like he had been trampled in a stampede. It was him. She rushed over and grasped his arm to pull him upright. "You did it," she whispered, ignoring the sudden onslaught of excited cheering that threatened to crack her earpiece. Bruce reached up with a shaking hand and threw his earpiece away. " _You_ did it," he insisted quietly as she helped him stand. " _You_ , Natasha." The fervent tone in his voice pulled her eyes back to his and she was alarmed when they were full of tears. He pulled her into a sudden embrace. She went stiff at first, caught off guard by a hug, of all things.

"Thank you," he whispered. She couldn't see his face, but it sounded as though the tears might have fallen. As she recovered enough to hug him back, Natasha thought that she might finally be Bruce Banner's friend.

* * *

The team tried a few more trial runs at Bruce's insistence and they all went beautifully. They worked out a set routine - Tony dubbed it the "lullaby" - to draw Bruce back out, and they tinkered with methods for keeping him calm through the return flights. Bruce was partial to opera, so Natasha packed a bag with headphones and an iPod filled with every opera album she could find. She also added a trauma blanket and some spare shirts and shoes for the return trips. The Hulk responded to her more quickly each time, and she even saw a spark of recognition in his eyes in the latest test runs. Bruce's demeanor had shifted as well. She noticed that he sat beside her automatically now, as though it didn't even occur to him to look around for other options, and there was no longer any uncertainty in his gait when he approached her. His smile was always instant and natural when she entered a room. She recognized the shift in their relationship immediately, but it took the passage of weeks before she really understood what it meant.

Bruce had always had walls around himself, walls to keep his anger contained and to keep himself at what he deemed an appropriate distance from the people around him. He had actively avoided friends and connections for many of the years that S.H.I.E.L.D. had tracked him in order to keep them safe from both the Hulk and the government reprisals that came with helping him. She had come up against his walls more times than she could count. She had plowed face first into his unshakeable walls when she tried to persuade him into joining S.H.I.E.L.D., slammed into the unassailable barrier when she tried to call him back from the brink of his transformation in the underbelly of a plummeting helicarrier, and she had more recently pushed against his walls when he refused to work on his Hulk problem. But now the problem was solved and he was as warm and open as a summer's day. Finally she realized that the walls hadn't come down - she had just made it to the other side.

He trusted her. It was a warm and heady sensation.

So when the whole team gathered to eat dinner or go through a mission briefing, it was just her and Bruce behind that distancing wall as everybody carried on beyond the barrier, oblivious to its existence in the first place. It was a strangely comforting feeling, like being in a snow globe and peering at the world through curved glass. She wondered if this was how Clint felt when he went home to his farm and his family. The thought unsettled her for a reason she couldn't identify; she pushed it aside and thought no more of it.

* * *

Despite Bruce's trepidation over transitioning into the Hulk near civilians, he eventually joined the Avengers on their Hydra raids. Their foremost objective was to find the scepter Loki had brought with him when he decided to conquer the world. Hydra's weapons were becoming more and more threatening and technologically advanced; Tony, Bruce, and Thor all agreed that the tech had been developed from the staff and the "glowstick of destiny" (as Tony called it) shot to number one on their Most Wanted list. The increasingly dangerous weapons were making their fights longer and harder won, and Natasha knew it wouldn't be long before they needed Bruce in the field.

The day finally came when, a few months after the Hydra-busting mission began, they flew into Sokovia to raid a remote Hydra base in the mountains and ran into a slew of bunkers bristling with advanced weaponry. They would be cut down by laser fire if they tried to fight their way in. Natasha knew what was coming when she heard Cap's sigh. "Code Green?" she whispered to him, trying to keep her voice from being picked up by their comms. "Yeah," he replied reluctantly. She wasn't sure whether he wasn't eager to release the Hulk or whether he was just feeling Bruce's pain. "Tony, would you do the honors?"

"It would be my pleasure," Tony replied from behind the glowing lenses of his mask. "Code Green," he half sang over the comms, and the electronic crackle didn't cover his absolute delight. She could imagine Bruce's grimace. A few tense seconds of radio silence hissed in her ear before Bruce's voice followed. "Copy that," he replied. It was hard to gauge his mood through the crackle of the earpiece, but she didn't imagine that it was a very good one. A moment later, the Hulk's roar shook the very air around her and her thoughts fell back to earth forcefully.

The Hulk ran through the bunkers like an indestructible linebacker, leaving a trail of explosions, flying chunks of debris, and plumes of oily, black smoke. The laser blasts of Hydra pistols zapped all around her, but she wasn't discouraged. It was only a matter of time before the base fell, now that they had played their ultimate trump card. The Hulk's bellows of rage kept a steady rhythm for a while, until finally even he fell into silence as the last of the bunkers fell.

"I think it's time for a lullaby," Steve's voice informed her immediately. "I'm on it," she answered and followed the Other Guy as he drifted away from the smoking piles of rubble he had created. "Hey, Big Guy," she began gently. "The sun's getting real low."

A few moments later, she and a shaking, shirtless Bruce clambered aboard the quinjet. She handed him his headphones and music. "Mission accomplished," she told him as he scrolled to one of the many playlists he had created in recent weeks. "You did it. And you didn't hurt anyone who wasn't Hydra."

"Good," he said without emotion - but the continued shaking of his hands gave him away. She draped the trauma blanket over his shoulders and sat beside him for the whole flight back.

* * *

In the following weeks, Bruce became a full-time member of the team. His reluctance about "going green" never faded, but she also saw the light in his eyes when he boarded the jet with the rest of them. She recognized it immediately, because the same look had graced her face in her early S.H.I.E.L.D. days.

It was _belonging_. Bruce wasn't immune to the sensation, and neither was the Hulk.

Neither was she, for that matter. Whether they were working together to take down Hydra or just congregating to eat dinner, she had to admit that having a team again felt pretty good. She took note of Bruce's more relaxed body language and the increased frequency of his smile and knew that Bruce felt it, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I wrote this, I racked my brain for what sort of movies Bruce would like… and this was my conclusion. After brainstorming, Bruce Banner as an old movie buff is one of my favorite headcanons. And, when I was fishing through various Bruce/Natasha tags on Tumblr (for research, I didn't do any mooning over gifsets of the two of them, how dare you suggest such a thing… *coughIamaliarcough*) I saw that I was not the only one to posit such a thing. So, basically, Bruce's taste in movies is confirmed lol. My reasoning behind this choice is that Bruce suffers actively from isolation and depression, and it seemed likely to me that he would gravitate towards older, simpler movies with positive themes. He wouldn't want to wallow in darkness anymore than he does in his everyday life. I also suspect him of being a hopeless romantic (which will be explored a little more in upcoming chapters) and so I can see him being drawn to the sweet, innocent love stories of Chaplin movies, especially given the depth of his isolation. Add to that the fact that Chaplin included very universally uplifting and humanistic messages in his movies and I think Bruce would love them. After all, when we meet him in _The Avengers_ , he's doing unsung humanitarian work. Ugh, I love the man.
> 
> Now some of you might be wondering why the lullaby worked so quickly… and after rewatching parts of _The Incredible Hulk_ and doing some brainstorming over the Hulk we see in both Avengers movies, I realized that the Hulk has never harmed anyone that Bruce likes (aside from accidentally injuring Betty the very first time he transformed). Bruce had only negative experiences with Natasha prior to his Hulk-out on the helicarrier - she lured him to a remote location under false pretenses when they first met (and easily mixed lies with truth during that conversation) and then he finds out that S.H.I.E.L.D. and Natasha by extension are lying to all of them about a weapons program - so the Hulk was not happy to see her that first time. However, the Hulk never behaved aggressively towards Betty in _TIH_ , or towards Tony in _Avengers_. So, once Bruce got to know Natasha, I don't think the Hulk would have hurt her either. Plus, I saw an interview with Scarlett Johansson in which she described the physical touch of the lullaby as being akin to comforting physical contact that people sometimes need when they're extremely emotional - even if they behave as though they don't want it. I was intrigued by the idea of a Hulk that was in pain and in need of human contact. It made sense to me that at this moment in their tentative relationship, the Hulk would respond to her. What do you guys think?


	5. Chapter 5

It was late in the day, another Hydra base had been turned to rubble, and Bruce was sitting beside Natasha in the quinjet for the flight home. His unfocused expression told her that he was far away.

"Hey, you," she bumped his shoulder gently, always careful about startling him, especially when he was shaky after a Code Green. "What are you listening to?"

She could almost see the moment when his mind fell back to earth; he blinked and shifted in his seat as he pulled his headphones down around his neck. "I'm sorry?"

"What are you listening to?"

"Just some of the stuff you got for me," he evaded. Nothing activated Natasha's mental crosshairs like a deflection. She zeroed in.

"Let me see."

Bruce surrendered the iPod easily enough, but his movements were uncertain and his face clouded with reluctance. She raised a quizzical eyebrow at him. "That bad, huh?"

He smiled sheepishly and shrugged. "You tell me."

She glanced at the iPod and was unsurprised that he was listening to one of the dozens of opera albums she had gotten for him. "What's so bad about Puccini?" she asked.

"Nothing," Bruce shrugged. "Just not a lot of people like opera."

"Were you afraid I was going to judge your music tastes?" she asked, caught somewhere between disbelief and laughter.

"I don't know," he replied noncommittally. A smile twitched at the edge of his lips and his expression turned devious. As devious as Bruce Banner could manage, anyway. "Actually, I just didn't want you to steal my iPod. I was listening to that, you know."

"You're a jerk, Banner," she smiled at him, ruining the jab.

"You're the music stealer - don't take it out on me."

She slapped the iPod back into his hand. "Happy?"

"Reasonably," he replied with a distracted smile, and stared at the screen. A stylized portrait of a Chinese woman wearing a haughty expression stared back. _Turandot_ was scrawled in angry letters beneath her searing gaze.

"If you weren't such a jerk, I would ask you what it's about," she commented lightly.

"Well, _if_ you asked," he replied with a smile, "I would tell you that it's about a princess who challenges her suitors to solve riddles in order to win her hand. But none of them can and she has them all executed. Until one of them gives her a challenge of his own." He trailed off.

"Let me guess - somebody dies tragically?" she commented wryly.

"Actually, they fall in love," he replied.

"A _happy_ ending?" she asked. "In an opera?"

"Yeah," he laughed. "Weird, I know." His gaze turned thoughtful. "I guess that's why I like it."

Natasha felt a rush of affection for Bruce Banner and his happy endings. It was a warm sensation - but an alien one. It was too deep, too invasive… She wasn't entirely comfortable with the feeling and twisted away from it, reaching for the firm familiarity of teasing instead.

"Bruce Banner," she mused. "The Incredible Hulk… more like the Incredible Softy."

"See, I _knew_ you were going to judge me," he complained. His words were wounded, but his tone was warm. Natasha smirked.

"Who said anything about judging? I was going to ask for a turn with the headphones." Bruce's look of surprise quickly morphed into a smile. After a few minutes of _Turandot_ , she surrendered the headphones again, but she had to admit… there was a certain appeal to the whole happy ending idea. True love, beating all odds, finding lasting happiness - it was the stuff of dreams. Normal people's dreams, anyway. She'd never thought much about any of those things herself. Growing up in a place that was meant to create human weapons certainly didn't encourage such thoughts. Of course, Bruce didn't seem the type to like fairytales either.

She glanced at him. With his music restored, Bruce's expression was serene.

* * *

It started out as just another mission. Routine, simple, in-and-out. It had required a Code Green for the final push, but nothing too drastic; in the end, Bruce had Hulked out for less than an hour. So when she pulled his arm around her neck and helped him aboard the quinjet, she could feel that he was shaking less than usual.

"Thanks, Natasha," he murmured as he sank into his seat, already reaching for the bag she'd set out for him. He pulled on a shirt as she dug for the trauma blanket, finally fishing it out from beneath spare clothing and a few books. He kept adding things when she wasn't looking. She was fully prepared to rib him about the fact, and gave a longsuffering sigh in preparation as she unfurled the blanket, pulling it around his shoulders. Her fingers brushed against the icy skin of his forearms and her plans changed.

"You're freezing," she muttered, rubbing his hand between hers. The cold of these Eastern European Hydra bases was getting annoying. Why couldn't they base themselves in Hawaii? She shook her head when she thought of how much that sounded like Tony.

"I'll be fine," Bruce protested, starting to pull away.

"No you don't," she said firmly, and reached for his other hand. He surrendered without any further fuss. "The Big Guy doesn't feel the cold, but you can get frostbite, Bruce." She rejoiced inwardly when he didn't correct her nickname. Sometimes you had to take the small victories. Of course, since he didn't react to that nickname, she was going to be forced to find one that he would react to…

"The Incredible Ice Cube." she said with a grin. Bruce groaned, but his lips twitched.

"I thought that was my nickname," called Cap from the front of the jet.

"You don't hold the monopoly on ice jokes, Steve," she corrected. Steve sighed.

Natasha felt the warmth returning to Bruce's hands so she shifted her efforts and rubbed at his arms next; he stiffened underneath her touch. "You okay?" she asked absently, pushing back from him to catch his gaze.

He smiled, but the uncertain set of his shoulders and the angle at which he was tilting his head away from her proclaimed his embarrassment. In the unchanging light of the quinjet, his eyes dilated, just a little. "Yeah," he answered, and she heard it for the deflection it was. "I'm much better now, thanks."

She pulled back and her fingertips brushed against his pounding pulse. Bruce turned away and wrapped himself tightly in the blanket. Like it was a shield, she thought faintly as she drifted away from her usual seat beside him and settled on the opposite side of the jet. The engines rumbled to life as Tony prepped for takeoff.

Bruce was embarrassed, which wasn't particularly unusual. He was an unassuming kind of guy and shyness came with that territory. But the sudden over sensitivity to touch and closeness… that was not so easy to explain.

Or maybe it was, and she just didn't care to. She winced inwardly, but kept her face impassive. (Like ice on top but the surging river underneath, as she had learned in the Red Room.)

She did have an explanation, she admitted to herself slowly and carefully, forcing herself to take the mental steps through this unpleasant tangle. She knew these physical symptoms, having manipulated targets too many times to count based on exactly this type of physical gauge.

Bruce was attracted to her.

She stared at the quinjet's blank wall opposite her seat and ignored Bruce's huddled form at the edge of her peripheral vision.

She had handled this sort of situation many times, she told herself. But all that echoed back at her was _this time is different_. And it was - because Bruce Banner wasn't a target and their lives weren't an elaborate game.

This time there was no superior telling her what to feel - or what not to. This time she didn't know what to do.

Tony guided the jet into the air and Natasha felt the world fall away under her feet.

* * *

That night, Natasha had the worst nightmare of her life.

It started out simply enough; she was in a field, standing near a house that looked suspiciously like Clint's, even though she was still dressed for a mission. Of course, Dream Natasha didn't really notice the incongruity. She drifted into the house looking for something, but she wasn't sure what…

She was inside. The light that spilled though the windows was golden and warm. There were books strewn around the tables that stood between mismatched armchairs and dozens of framed photos crammed on the walls. She couldn't make out any of the pictures, so she drifted on. The kitchen was next, small and cramped. There were dishes in the sink and pictures drawn in crayon posted to the refrigerator. Clint's kids, she thought hazily. Where were they?

She was on the porch. This wasn't Clint's house; there was no woodpile out front, and no half-finished railing around the porch. She couldn't figure out where he was… or where _she_ was… so she gazed at the crystal blue sky and the flowers that stirred lazily in the wind. It was nice, this place. Calm and quiet. In fact… it was _her_ house.

She heard footsteps behind her, but she wasn't afraid. "Natasha," breathed a voice in her ear, and two arms curled around her, pulling her back into an embrace. She merely hummed in approval as whoever-it-was kissed her neck softly. This was safe and right; she knew who it was, she just couldn't think of his face at the moment…

She turned - and it was Bruce. Of course it was Bruce, she thought in a fog. Who else would it be? They were together and they were so happy… He kissed her. He was sweet and gentle and she thought it felt very nice. He was smiling so freely when he pulled back; the lack of fear or uncertainty in his eyes was captivating. And he really did have the most beautiful smile. She reached up to run her fingers through the dark, curly hair that had been tossed in the wind, but he was gone.

"Natasha!" called his voice from inside. She followed it. He sat on a sofa in the living room, his head visible over the back. He was leaning down. "Okay," he whispered, but didn't look at her. "Let's play a game. He held up a hand and a quarter gleamed in his fingers. "Heads I win, tails you lose," he said, smiling away from her. Why didn't he look at her?

She glided around the couch, and realized that he wasn't speaking to her at all. Sitting beside Bruce were two tiny children, a little boy with wild brown curls and a girl with two fiery red braids. The children smiled at her. "Mommy," the girl said sweetly. Playing with the children, she thought faintly. Of course he was. They were a family.

She looked around the room and liked the sense of organized chaos. The children's laughter mixed with Bruce's behind her. Her heart warmed at the sound, and for one perfect moment she felt something solid and alive in the center of her chest where before there had been an empty space that ached around the edges. Her brow furrowed as she tried to remember _why_ she had felt that way…

Dream Bruce flipped the coin.

It hit the floor with a sickening thud and she woke up.

* * *

Natasha could handle nightmares. They were rough sometimes, especially the ones that mixed memory with imagination, but she had learned to cope. She had endured torture, pain, and even death in her dreams.

This was worse.

She woke up gasping for air, with tears already pricking at her eyes. For a long moment, she couldn't think; she could only feel. The alien happiness that had floated around her in the dream turned to lead in the harsh light of reality and crushed her. A few tears actually spilled across her cheeks before she regained control. She breathed deeply and evenly, and fixed her eyes on various minute details in her room as she emptied her mind. She stared at the dust on her bedside table and traced patterns across the ceiling as she let the pain slide away from her. After several minutes had passed, she let herself analyze the dream.

She understood it, in part at least. It was a hideous parody of reality; Clint's house, Clint's family. She did love that place, and she thought his family was wonderful. But she had never thought, never even dreamt that anything like that was possible for her.

Until tonight.

She felt nauseous, and forced herself to stand. The room was brimming with shadows and the moonlight did very little to dispel them. She reached out a shaky hand to snap the light switch. The images of the dream would not fade even when faced with the light. The room felt too hot, too small, too impossible…

A sound caught her attention, filtering faintly through the walls of her bedroom. She focused desperately on it, sliding away from the dream and the pain it carried with it. She recognized it after a moment; Bruce was playing music in his lab. He had trouble sleeping occasionally, and his usual response to insomnia was work. He was listening to _Turandot_ again. She caught a few words of _Nessun Dorma_ despite the dampening effect of her walls. The distraction helped to calm her racing pulse.

She breathed. After a moment, she thought again.

She understood that her dreaming of Bruce was probably triggered by her realization earlier that day and her confusion over it. So far, so logical. But the children… the children made her feel as though she had been cut open while she slept and filled with acid in place of blood. She had never dreamt of children, never even thought about them. It was impossible, so why would she bother? Why would she care?

She didn't, she insisted to herself. It was just her traitorous brain kicking up emotions and memories and associations and scrambling them into something disturbing. Of course, that extremely logical evaluation did nothing to explain the fierce ache in her heart. She felt as though something had been ripped out of her, something she didn't know was growing in the first place.

She sank down onto the carpet between her bed and the window and wrapped her arms tightly around her knees. She remembered Bruce pulling the blanket around himself as a shield and she thought faintly that he had the right idea. The sick feeling in the pit of her stomach didn't fade and she shivered uselessly. Her nausea only increased when she realized that it wasn't the strangeness of the dream that had disturbed her, it was waking up from it.

She recognized in a detached sort of way that she missed Bruce.

_Nessun Dorma_ … The words drifted towards her like an apparition and her tired mind translated them absently. _None shall sleep._

The night was long.

* * *

She went to the Tower's gym when the sun rose and didn't emerge until her arms and legs shook with exhaustion. She skipped breakfast and waited far later than usual for lunch. She was using cheap avoidance tactics, which really ought to be beneath her, but she also knew that she needed time and space to allow the troubling emotions from the night before to completely evaporate. So she waited until well past midday to head towards the sitting room and its adjoining kitchen and bar. She was thinking about foregoing the kitchen and heading straight for the bar as she rounded the final corner.

Bruce was sitting on the steps that led to the second level of the sitting room, effectively barring her path to both the kitchen and the bar. He was staring at one of Tony's tablet-like devices - although she knew Tony would scoff at that comparison - and wearing one of his most engrossed expressions. Her footsteps shook him out of his trance of concentration and he looked up at her.

"Natasha," he said in surprise. "I was wondering where you were." He stood up and slipped the tablet into one of the pockets of the lab coat he almost always wore around the Tower. "I saved you some breakfast…" he continued uncertainly. "But it's cold now… obviously." He took a few steps in her direction and she saw her cold expression reflected in his glasses. He saw it, too, and paused.

"Are you okay?" he tried, very carefully. Under any other circumstances, she would have found his uncertainty and consideration endearing. Today, however, she was trying not to feel anything at all. Especially not anything to do with him. At least not until she had unknotted her own thoughts a little.

"Fine," she answered with finality, stopping short of coldness lest she rouse that persistent kind streak of his. "Just hungry."

"Oh," he answered, and she read his continued concern in the crease between his brows. He was too perceptive for a scientist, she thought in annoyance as she passed him and took the stairs. She stepped behind the bar and bent down to rummage. She restrained a sigh when she heard Bruce's footsteps following her.

"So… _this_ is breakfast?" he asked in a casual tone, leaning over the bar.

"More like lunch," she corrected lightly, finally finding the vodka she was looking for. She stood and brought the bottle with her.

"Healthy," Bruce commented, his voice neutral.

She was already pouring herself a glass. She could almost feel the rate at which Bruce's eyebrows were rising. She raised the glass to her lips.

"You really should eat something," Bruce interrupted, and the note of genuine concern in his voice was so _annoying._ She let the glass fall back to the counter with a savage _clink._

Bruce looked a little scared, and if she hadn't been so irritated, she would have laughed at the sight. As it was, she filed away the image for a moment when she could properly enjoy it. "So," he bravely continued, "breakfast?" He gestured towards the door to the kitchen.

"Sure," she said flatly, and turned towards the refrigerated drinks. He stared after her. "What are you-" he started. She returned with some orange juice and dumped it over the vodka.

"That's better," she declared. "Well-balanced and everything." She lifted her glass in a mock toast and downed the glass in a few swift gulps.

Bruce's look of disbelief was priceless. He shifted his weight and rubbed at his neck absently. "Natasha…" he paused and sighed. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"Why do you ask?" she deflected automatically.

"Well, for starters, you just had a screwdriver for breakfast."

"Lunch," she insisted, irritated by his earnest inquiries and that fact that she felt touched when he wouldn't let the subject drop. She was tempted to pour herself another round, but Bruce was leaning forward to catch her eye.

"Natasha, I hope you know…" he paused and she saw him mentally rummaging for the right words. "You've done so much for me in these past months. I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't helped me with the lullaby," he trailed off and the shadows that always lurked behind his eyes were more visible than usual. "You've risked so much for me and I can't ever thank you enough. I know you've been my handler on the team, and that can't have been easy for you, always bearing the burden of making sure I'm okay and not dangerous to anybody…" he was rambling, but she was transfixed. "I just hope you know, that if you ever needed it… I would help you, too. As much as I could." He shrank back from her a little, as though embarrassed by the declaration.

Natasha was speechless for a long moment, and she stared at her empty glass. _Ice on top, surging river below_ , she thought distantly as she felt that ice begin to crack. "Thanks, Bruce," she said finally, and meant it. "I'm just… having a rough day," she admitted, relieved when the admission only stung a little. "Nightmares kept me up last night."

She saw the clouds gathering over him as she spoke and moved quickly to dispel them. "Not about the Big Guy," she clarified, and was relieved when his expression cleared. "Good," he whispered. He didn't ask what they were about; he just listened. It was such a relief.

"They were about something worse," she answered anyway, and the echoes of the previous night's pain tingled like damaged nerve endings. She saw his sympathy, swift and genuine, and she felt… better, somehow. At least marginally.

"I'm sorry, Natasha," he said quietly. She stared at his face, creased with a sympathetic echo of her pain, as he looked down at their hands resting on opposite sides of the bar. He was so somber in the face of her pain, as though it was something terrible and almost sacred. She supposed it was - to her, at any rate.

Maybe it was to him, too.

It was the snow globe all over again; she felt the walls that always existed between her and the rest of the world close in, but Bruce was inside _with_ her. She was used to scaling defenses, wearing people down, breaking past the walls that targets erected; she had expected to make it past Bruce's distancing tactics eventually. She had been glad when it happened, but not surprised.

She had never thought that he would make it past hers.

But there he was, standing across from her as quietly as always, and she had never felt closer to anyone. She couldn't keep him out even if she wanted to, a point which she now realized was very much in doubt. She thought back to her wonderful, horrible dream and considered… maybe not _all_ of that was impossible. Maybe the smiles were possible… maybe the kisses were possible (and she was surprised when her heart sped up at the thought)… maybe even the happiness might be.

Bruce Banner was quite possibly the kindest, most wonderful person she had ever known. Maybe that was all that her mind had been trying to tell her. Maybe sometimes the simple answer really was the best one. And right now, the simplest answer to the question of what she wanted was probably standing right in front of her. She smiled at him, and a strange warmth filled her chest, finally burning away the chill of the dream. Bruce glanced up at her and smiled back uncertainly, looking a little confused by her sudden shift. She sympathized with him; she was confused too. But maybe she was moving towards clarity.

"Thank you, Bruce," she said quietly, and hoped he heard her sincerity. "What you said… it helps."

She _did_ go to the kitchen for some real food after that, and Bruce trailed after her, pointing out the leftovers he had saved for her and the other options in the fridge. She pulled out the leftovers immediately and he smiled.

Her words from so long ago floated through her mind. _Bruce, I'm not sure that being inconspicuous is your calling._ After the way he had crept up on her, she thought she might have to reevaluate that assessment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So… this is the chapter where I really rolled the dice on characterization. When I thought about when feelings had developed between Bruce and Natasha, the scenario that made the most sense to me was Bruce falling first, and quite by accident. In retrospect, I honestly don't see how he could help it; he's put into a highly intimate situation with his teammate who has to be able to "find" him when he's at his most unreachable. They had to nurture a connection and then she manages to draw him out and, in his mind, "save" him from the monster that has destroyed his life. He trusts her more than he has been able to trust anyone, ever - even Betty, the woman he wanted to marry once upon a time. Natasha isn't afraid of the Hulk in _Age of Ultron_ and, more importantly to Bruce, she's no longer at risk to be hurt by him. The Hulk likes her. After being in such deep, dark isolation for years upon years, how could he help but fall head over heels for the only person who could find him in the midst of that?
> 
> As for Natasha, I don't think she would have thought of Bruce as relationship material originally. She probably didn't think of anyone in that fashion for a good, long time. Why would she? She struggled with guilt over all she had done (as we learn in _The Avengers_ ) and with feeling like a dehumanized monster (as we learn in _AoU_ ). But then she works in close proximity with someone who literally is a monster… but he's also a goofy, kind, good man. She sees the same dichotomy in him as she feels in herself and it gives her hope. And then she perceives the feelings that he has "accidentally fumbled into" (as Mark Ruffalo put it in an interview) and thinks "why not?" Why shouldn't they run with it? For probably the first time in her life she has the ability to respond to romantic love in a healthy way and somebody worth responding to. And the chemistry between them is so sweet and bizarrely innocent… it's just… love. I think both of them would be drawn to something pure and good, given all that they had suffered and all the simple human connection they had each been denied.
> 
> I decided to throw in the dream angle because Natasha does't seem like the sappy type - she wouldn't think "OMG A BOYFRIEND." But our brains have a funny way of kicking up our subconscious as we sleep, and I think that her subconscious would be hard at work on the conundrum of Banner having feelings for her. It's possible she had never really responded to this delicate and serious a personal situation before; after all, she's only thirty years old and spent most of her life as a super assassin. That's not exactly a life that's conducive to cultivating human connection. She sees a future with Bruce and such a thing would probably scare her at first. Not only because it's not possible in the traditional way - like Clint has with the farm and the kids - but because she likes the idea of being with him somewhere deep down. Also, have you ever had one of those dreams where it's so perfect that waking up is like a nightmare? It's one of the most profoundly tragic feelings I've ever experienced… so I thought it might be an excellent way to prod Natasha into some much-needed self-examination. There's also the fact that - and I'm drawing again from interviews with Scarlett Johansson and Mark Ruffalo, here - the two of them see an opportunity for hope and happiness in the other. They have a vision of an idealized future together, something that manifests itself in her dreams since she would never think of such impossible perfection consciously. And maybe she doesn't want exactly what Clint has; nevertheless, I suspect that his family was her first experience with a "normal" family unit and as such would end up being her default ideal.
> 
> But here's the important question - what do you think?


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha Romanoff was never caught off guard - with one incredible exception. For such a big guy, Bruce Banner managed to sneak up on her. (A short story tracing the relationship from inauspicious start to possible finish.) Brutasha/BruceNat.

They finally located Loki's scepter in an enormous Sokovian base on a mountainside. It was a Code Green if ever there was one, with soldiers armed with super weapons and even an Enhanced or two in the field. They won in the end, though; they always did when they assembled. It was a good feeling.

Clint taking a shot in the side was a much less good feeling, and Natasha spent a few frantic minutes worrying for him before they contained the bleeding and got Dr. Cho on the phone to arrange for medical attention. She had to admit that Tony's connections had really come in handy since the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. With Clint taken care of, Natasha turned her attention to Bruce who was, predictably, brooding beneath his headphones.

He smiled at her, and pulled his headphones down to rest around his neck. "The lullaby worked better than ever," she commented, and was disappointed at the wary shadows that _still_ lurked behind his eyes. "How long until you trust me?" she asked softly, trying to smile despite the weight of uncertainty that propelled the question.

"It's not you I don't trust," he answered, matching her low, earnest tone. She wasn't entirely sure that was the complete truth. But she pushed her doubts away and drew warmth from the fact that he had voiced his trust in her, however clouded by his usual fear of the Other Guy's potential for disaster. She was determined to work on his attitude towards that Other Guy.

"Thor," she called to the god behind her. "Report on the Hulk." Bruce would hear that he hadn't killed anyone or caused any wanton destruction and maybe he would lighten up a little.

Thor turned obligingly. "The gates of Hel are filled with the screams of his victims," he replied with enthusiasm.

Bruce groaned and buried his head in his hands. Natasha seethed silently.

_Thor_. That dense _meathead_. If there was a way to kill a god, Natasha was going to find out and make it happen. She glared at him until he fumbled for an alternate report that was considerably less violent, but the damage was done.

If took the remainder of the flight back to Avengers Tower and a lot of effort on her part before Bruce smiled again.

* * *

With the scepter finally out of Hydra's hands, an air of finality hung over Avengers Tower. It was the reason they had all come together in recent months and the goal they had all rallied around. Now Thor was talking about leaving to take it back to the guarded vaults of Asgard, Steve was preparing to return to his hunt for Bucky Barnes, Clint was spending more time on the phone with his wife - explaining his injury and promising to head home soon, she was sure - and Tony and Bruce seemed determined to never leave their lab space. She could feel it coming like the first hint of a frost: the Avengers, disassembled. She wondered that it stung so much.

She was glad for the distraction when Tony threw a characteristically lavish party to celebrate their recent victory. It would be nice to be a team for a few hours of fun instead of violence… especially before they all went their separate ways. It would also be nice to see Bruce outside of the lab for the first time in days. They had barely spoken since returning from Sokovia and she hoped that he wasn't taking Thor's misjudged words too much to heart.

Bruce wandered into the party later than everyone else, looking as lost and intimidated as ever. He nearly bumped into several chairs and light fixtures within his first few minutes of entering the room and Natasha felt a smile spread itself across her face. Always so uncertain, always drifting. He needed an anchor, she thought. He finally made it up the stairs to the second level of the sitting-room-turned-party-venue and she tossed him a line. "Bruce!" she called over the music and the surrounding chatter. His face relaxed into a relieved smile and he moved towards the sofa she had snagged early on, taking the seat she offered him.

"You look like a man in need of a drink," she commented.

"Definitely," he agreed with a smile. "I always hated parties."

"Then I think you picked the wrong friend," she laughed and glanced at Tony who was making his rounds and stopping to chat with almost everyone. Bruce nodded and sighed.

"Lucky for you, I'm an expert in stealth," she added, leaning in close to whisper to him. "Stick with me, Bruce, and I'll get you out of here alive."

Bruce laughed and she was glad to see his genuine smile make its first appearance of the night. "I might take you up on that."

"Good. Now what are you drinking, Bruce?"

"Umm, I don't know. Nothing too intense… I don't want to risk…" he trailed off and gave a frustrated sigh, "For most people, the term 'party crashing' isn't literal," he finished quietly.

The shadows were back in force and Natasha stifled a sigh of her own. "I know just the thing," she replied gently. "Be right back."

She found the only unmanned bar out of the handful Tony had brought in for the occasion and mixed up something sweet and weak. Enough to take the edge off, but not push anybody over. She was putting the finishing touches on their drinks when Bruce appeared at the bar. She was on the verge of poking fun at him for being such a social lightweight, but he spoke first.

"How does a nice girl like you end up in a place like this?" He asked with a smile - and she was absolutely caught off guard. Bruce Banner _playing_ with her? She was inexplicably delighted.

"Fella done me wrong," she replied, putting on the voice of an old-fashioned dame from those old movies he loved so much.

"You got lousy taste in men, kid."

Oh, this was going to be _fun._

"Well, he's not so bad," she began lightly, holding back a smile with difficulty. "He's got a temper, but deep down he's all fluff." She watched Bruce absorb that with his usual diffidence. The man was more disarming than he knew. He was a lot of things that he didn't know. She abruptly decided to weave a little more truth into the story. "Fact is," she continued, not breaking character for a moment, "he's not like anyone I've ever known. All my friends are fighters, but this guy spends his time avoiding fights because he knows he'll win."

She saw the change that washed over his face. Disbelief chased by uncertainty chased by… hope?

He finally reached for his drink. "He sounds amazing," he commented noncommittally as he took his first sip. Natasha saw an opening.

"He's also a huge dork," she said smoothly, and sipped her own drink. An adorable dork, she added mentally. The dart was impeccably aimed and landed with as much force as she could have hoped for. Bruce smiled self-effacingly and shook his head. She saw his confidence give way just a little. Maybe it had been a little _too_ well aimed…

"Chicks dig that," she added immediately. He was smiling at her again, and she was abruptly aware of how close they were, leaning over the bar towards each other. He looked awfully good tonight, dressed for once in a suit and tie and looking healthy and happy at the same time. His dark eyes lit up with his smile, a sight she didn't see nearly often enough. For a scientist, she decided, he cleaned up pretty well.

She decided to try a little experiment. "So, what do you think?" she asked. "Should I fight this? Or should I run with it?" She saw from the sudden stiffening of his spine and the nervous set of his face that he perceived the moment their conversation had drifted away from being a game.

"Run with it, right? Or…what did he do that was so wrong to you?" he stuttered his way through the question, reframing it once or twice in the middle. _Adorable dork_ , she thought fondly. This time, she definitely saw the hope follow behind his disbelief. He _wanted_ her to be flirting with him. She smiled half to herself and half to him.

"Not a damn thing." She leaned towards him. "But never say never." It was an excellent moment to walk away and leave things open for later. She passed Steve on her way back to her seat and she could almost feel the knowing smile he sent in her direction. She _could_ feel the way Bruce's eyes followed her. She smiled to herself.

* * *

For a guy who hated parties, Bruce managed to finally loosen up once the crowd thinned and only the Avengers and a few close friends remained. She noticed with satisfaction that he chose a seat beside hers when they all congregated in the Sit Pit for beers. Thor sat like a king holding court - which, disturbingly, was probably not far from reality - and left his legendary hammer on the table. She chatted aimlessly with Bruce as Clint decided that a sword-in-the-stone routine would be fun. He failed to lift the hammer, of course, and she and Bruce laughed.

Most everyone tried their luck - or their worth, as Thor put it - including Bruce. _Dork_ , she thought fondly as he reclaimed his seat beside her. The lively chatter continued around them, and Bruce smiled at her and told her funny stories about his pre-Hulk days as a scientist struggling for funding - and in a voice that held none of the usual weight of weariness. She laughed with him and marveled at how easy he always was to talk to. This thing with him… this worked. They fit, him and her. His quiet steadiness and her strength, her inability to surrender and his need for an anchor… it made sense, she thought in the back of her mind as she admired how beautiful Bruce's smile was. It worked. And it was even fun. She felt herself relax into a pleasant sensation of warmth within and without as the drinks buzzed in her head and Bruce's laugh filled her with something akin to joy. It was a perfect moment.

Right up until a robot that resembled a moving scrap heap dragged itself into the room and started spouting dark philosophical statements and playing recordings of Tony's voice that she'd never heard before. Beside her, Bruce stiffened. "Ultron," he said in recognition, glancing in alarm at Tony. Both their faces were grim. Natasha knew that there was going to be a very unpleasant team discussion at some point in the near future.

Ultron - or whatever that misshapen assassin droid was - fired on them and unleashed Tony's army of robots which it had apparently hacked and controlled. Lovely.

Well, Natasha thought as she jumped over and behind the bar and dragged Bruce with her, this was one way to end a party.

* * *

With their files destroyed, their technological capabilities extremely limited, and their spirits low, the Avengers gathered for a little old fashioned investigative work to figure out where Tony and Bruce's rogue Artificial Intelligence had run off to. It wasn't long before they all piled into the quinjet in pursuit, and an uneasy silence fell over the group; everyone was varying degrees of angry at Tony after the debacle at the Tower that now promised to become a worldwide threat. Bruce slumped in his seat like a man carrying more than his fair share of something. Natasha suspected that what he was carrying was guilt.

"Are you over here beating yourself up?" she asked as she sat down beside him.

"I guess I am," he muttered with a hollow laugh. "Don't you think I deserve it, though?" he asked without looking at her.

"Not particularly," she answered truthfully.

"Why not?"

"You guys were trying to do something good. You should have told the team, sure. But your intentions were good. That's got to count for something."

He stared at her in disbelief. "You're not angry?"

She paused to consider. "No." She was a little irritated by the fact that they had to run around chasing the love child of Tony Stark and Loki's scepter, but these things happened, in her bizarre world at least. "Don't carry it all by yourself, Bruce," she chided gently. "There's plenty of blame to go around. Besides, we're going to stop this thing."

He nodded, but it wasn't a particularly convincing effort. They sat in silence as they drew near to their destination: a shipyard in Wakanda.

* * *

The mission was an unparalleled disaster and Natasha felt for the first time what it meant for the Avengers to fail.

Everything went according to plan at the beginning; they boarded the cargo ship they had identified and Tony, Steve, and Thor confronted Ultron (in his shiny new eight-foot-tall form, which was more intimidating than Natasha would have liked). She and Clint held back and waited for the right moment; Bruce remained on the jet, waiting for the very probable Code Green. Things went sideways fast, and chaos fell like a stifling blanket across the hold of the cargo ship. Natasha felt the moment that one of Ultron's Enhanced minions hit her with something that sent red hot pain through her head like a super-heated metal spike. She had just enough time to think _oh no…_

And then she couldn't think at all.

She felt as robotic as Ultron, as though someone had plugged into her brain and was forcibly switching on memories that she had safely buried long ago. The images came in snatches, like an old television with bad reception, but she could not resist the will that forced her down below their surface.

Paneled halls… winding staircases… girls dancing and dancing and dancing…

The Red Room.

The familiar sensation of dread coiled in her stomach, cold and leaden. Sweat beaded on her face as the girls danced themselves to death…

Shooting. Shooting at targets and hitting them. Shooting at a human being because it was just the same, really, _just the same…_

The white hallways of gleaming tiles sparkled mercilessly as they wheeled her away for the "graduation ceremony." The other girls watched her with dead eyes and she couldn't escape from the straps binding her to the gurney. They stared after her but say nothing - because there was only smooth flesh where their mouths should be.

No voice, she thought. _No voice…_ She tried to scream, but her mouth was gone…

And suddenly she was staring at the boarding ramp of the quinjet, with Clint's arm holding her up and his voice yelling something into the comms. He pulled her aboard and she dropped bonelessly into a seat. Thor was there too, looking gray and worn. Her head ached and she felt hollow.

She could still hear the squeak of the gurney in her head and the gleaming tiles almost obscured Clint's face when he knelt in front of her. "You okay, Nat?" She felt far away and empty and cold and blank… so she suspected that the answer to that question was a definite _no._ She couldn't quite form the word, though. It hurt to think, so she tried not to.

One tiny whisper made it through her mental blockade. _Where was Bruce?_

"Bruce?" she rasped at Clint. He said something, but the gurney was screeching too loudly for her to hear. The sound faded and Clint's grim face swam back into view.

Metallic footsteps rang on the boarding ramp and she turned her splitting head to see whether her last sight on earth would be Ultron aiming a weapon at her. It was Tony, wearing his suit and half-carrying Bruce. Tony tried to lead him to a seat, but Bruce fell like a stone behind one of the consoles and huddled there blankly. He was caked with dirt, dust, and sweat and his eyes were red. Tony tossed a blanket at him and stepped out of his suit to collapse in a seat himself, burying his head in his hands. Clint slid into the pilot's chair silently and the boarding ramp hissed shut. She thought that she should sit with Bruce and find out what had happened, but Bruce wouldn't look at her and her body wouldn't cooperate with her plan to move. Her limbs felt too heavy and the memories still hung around her like curtains of gauze that just happened to be dripping with blood.

The trip to who-knew-where was spent in silence.

* * *

The safe house Clint decided on turned out to be _his_ house.

It felt strange to walk up to Clint's farm in the company of billionaire Tony Stark, the becaped god of thunder, and Captain America. She would have tried to think up a joke for the occasion, but her head still felt like a box of puzzle pieces that had been violently shaken and the tiny corner of her mind that wasn't aching fiercely was trailing behind them all with Bruce.

His face hadn't cleared at all during their lengthy flight, and he looked like an escaped prisoner of war as he stepped haltingly through Clint's front door wearing a sweat shirt that was much too big and a shell-shocked expression. She had gathered from the quiet calls between Tony and Maria Hill that Bruce had completely lost control at the hands of the same Enhanced that had hit her, Thor, and Steve. Apparently an entire building had come down, among other disasters. She took in his stiff stance and lost expression and knew that some damage control of the mental variety was in order.

Laura and Clint's kids made their grand entrance and she was distracted from the pressing gloom when each of the Avengers stared in shock. Her reaction to Clint's family had been similar once upon a time. She smiled as the kids ran up to give her their customary hugs. "Auntie Nat!" they called in delight. There was nothing in the world like a hug from a child; it always lightened her spirits when one of the kids tossed themselves at her with abandon, smiling without reservations. For a moment, she felt almost happy.

She stepped back towards Bruce when the kids gravitated towards their dad and caught his eye. He looked at her with surprise - at her easy affection with the kids, she supposed - but his gaze also held a terrible grief that almost made her shiver. He looked so out of place in the warmth of Clint's home, so tense with his arms held close to his body as though he was afraid of breaking something. With his grieved eyes and his painful isolation, it hurt to look at him.

She looked away.

* * *

"I don't know how to split you guys up," Laura said as she appeared in the doorway of Natasha's usual guest room. "There aren't enough rooms for everyone… any suggestions? Would Captain Rogers and Mr. Stark be okay as roommates?"

Natasha felt the urge to laugh at that particular mental image, but even in her mind she could feel the edge of hysteria that threatened behind each swell of emotion. She cursed the Enhanced witch that had scrambled her brains and settled for a smile. "They should be fine," she replied. It wasn't exactly a lie; they would do just as well as any other combination. She knew Tony would be more amenable to rooming with Bruce, but what Bruce desperately needed at the moment was quiet and rest, not Tony's constant stream of well-meaning chatter.

"Put Bruce in here," she volunteered, standing up from her seat on the bed.

"With you?" asked Laura with a knowing look. Natasha was irrationally irritated that she had already caught on. Especially since there really wasn't very much to catch onto.

"I'll take the couch downstairs. Bruce needs some alone time," she explained flatly.

Laura looked surprised.

* * *

Thor flew off not long after they arrived. "Excellent," muttered Clint. "Shorter line to the shower." And quite the line it was. Tony and Steve took the two bathrooms first, followed by Clint and Bruce.

Bruce trudged up the stairs like a man condemned when his turn came and Natasha sighed. She waited until the shower was running in the guest bathroom, then peeled off her jumpsuit and replaced it with her robe from the closet, settling in to wait for what was probably going to be a very cold shower. Bone-deep weariness filled her as she heard the water stop. Maybe the shower could wait, she thought hazily. The faucet rushed behind the bathroom door; Bruce must be shaving. She felt a ray of hope pierce the fog around her. He was functioning - good.

The door finally opened, and Bruce looked surprised to see her. The expression was quickly replaced by embarrassment as he became conscious of the fact that he was holding his shirt and not wearing it. _Dork_ , she thought and smiled faintly.

"Sorry," he apologized instantly, "I didn't know you were waiting." She could hear the strain of what had happened in Wakanda in his voice and see the fault lines behind his eyes. They matched the cracks she could feel in her own mind and it _hurt_. "I should have joined you," she said weakly, not sure if she was flirting or joking or both at once. After the day's events, she was badly off her game.

Bruce was kind enough not to call her out on the fact. He shifted awkwardly and joked about the cold water. "Missed our window," he shrugged, worrying the material of his shirt between his fingers. "Did we?" she asked, shocked by the rawness of her voice. She hadn't meant for that to come out so seriously. The hysteria that had threatened her ever since the flood of memories had begun swelled and pressed hard against her battered mind. The hairline fractures shifted and threatened to burst open. She could almost feel the memories rising up like ghosts to whirl around her.

She saw him absorb the seriousness of her question and all its ramifications; his face turned hard and she recognized that he was pulling away. He finally slipped into his shirt, buttoning the front as he put some physical distance between them. If she had been consciously planning any of this debacle, she would have waited until the events in Wakanda had faded from his mind before saying anything serious to him. Bruce, after all, had a very low threshold for hope. She sighed and knew what would come next.

"Natasha, there's no future with me…" There it was. He assumed that he knew what she wanted and that he could never be it. It was enough to infuriate her and break her heart all at once. She stood silently and waited for him to finish; pain had to be expressed before it could be dealt with - and she intended to deal with it once and for all.

"I can't ever have this — kids — do the math, I physically can't," he was halfway between anger and grief, and suddenly his intense look towards her and Clint's kids took on a much more painful shade. So that's what he thought - that she was determined to have a family. A bitter laugh threatened to escape, but she checked it. She could see that he was intent on wallowing in all the _can'ts_ and _impossibles_ as he tried his hardest to convince her that he was nothing worth having. Of course, if he wanted to play that game, she could easily outmaneuver him.

Because if these were his standards of worth, then she wasn't worth having either.

"Neither can I," she began, interrupting his self-destructive speech.

"What?" he asked, his shock palpable.

"In the Red Room, where I was trained, where I was raised, they have a graduation ceremony." For a moment, the words flowed easily. But this was a confession she had never made to anyone before — because there had been no reason, and she had no desire to speak about her time in the Red Room beyond what was absolutely necessary — and suddenly it froze in her throat. Bruce waited, his face creased with tension as he listened.

"They sterilize you."

Her words dropped into the room like a bomb, and the shrapnel hit them both. She felt the customary sting that always came with an admission, but this was worse than she had ever felt. The deeper the wound, the more it hurt to open, she supposed distantly.

Across from her, Bruce's silence had grown deep and focused. She continued.

"It's efficient. One less thing to worry about. The one thing that might matter more than a mission." Her voice broke and she felt the tears gathering in her eyes without her permission, boiling up from a place she couldn't control - not after her mind had been cracked open and the memories she had so carefully locked away came oozing out like blood from a wound. Bruce's voice floated through her memory. _Not even Charlie Chaplin could make you cry._

What a joke.

She could cry for days after having her monstrous past thrown in her face like so much acid. She wouldn't, because real crying (unlike the playacting variety) was never productive - and she didn't indulge in worthless activities. But when Bruce looked at her in horror - not at _her_ but at what she had suffered - and she saw the sympathetic tears in his eyes, she thought that maybe tears weren't entirely useless. Maybe she'd just never known anyone worth crying in front of.

"It makes everything easier," she concluded in a weak attempt at being matter-of-fact. "Even killing. Still think you're the only monster on the team?" She looked at him with bitter triumph. In the battle of the monsters, trained killing machine beat botched science experiment every time.

She saw the shift in his face and the set of his shoulders and thought that she had been right to tell him. He couldn't truly understand what it was to be raised as a weapon with every bit of your humanity cut away piece by piece… but maybe he understood what it was like to have your future forcibly channeled in a direction not of your choosing, with other possibilities you haven't even thought of yet amputated like so many perfectly healthy limbs.

"So we just disappear?" All his objections had dried up and the fight had gone out of him. He spoke quietly. She thought she caught a glimpse of hope buried deep in his eyes. She reached for it.

"I'm game if you are," she whispered.

Bruce looked out the window and she knew the view that greeted him. Sunlit fields full of grass and trees in the distance. The golden light failed to warm his face, but it caught the tears that still sparkled in his eyes.

"You look tired," she commented quietly.

"I'm just…" he sighed, and it was a jagged sound. "I'm sorry. For me, for you…" He caught her gaze for a fleeting moment, and his eyes were full of anguish. "For that city…" His voice broke, and Natasha felt tears prick her eyes a second time. The warning bells in her head gave her the strength she needed to push past them. He was close to breaking down, and that just wasn't safe, especially _here._

She stepped toward him and laid a hand on his arm. He flinched at her touch. "You need to calm down," she said as gently as she could.

"Yeah, tell me something I don't know," he laughed nervously, but his eyes were molten with fear. "Natasha," he began and swallowed hard, "what if I…?"

"You won't." She didn't allow even a scrap of uncertainty into her voice.

His eyes snapped to hers, and she saw the fear retreat, just a little. "You don't know that," he protested quietly.

"No," she agreed, "But I do know that I'm going to stay with you so that if anything happens, we can take care of it. The lullaby always works, Bruce."

"I wish you had been there today." He was staring at the carpet, so he didn't see the pain on her face. She took a moment to breathe and relax her voice before she spoke; she had to keep calm for the both of them.

"Me too," she whispered. He was trembling under her fingertips and she wasn't sure whether it was emotion or exhaustion. It was probably a very dangerous cocktail of both. Her hand slid away from him as she stepped towards the bed. He watched her curiously.

"C'mere," she beckoned, pulling the covers down.

If she hadn't been so distracted with trying to prevent a Hulk-out, she would have found his instant wariness hilarious. "Why?" he asked carefully.

"Come lie down, Bruce," she clarified patiently. "You need to rest."

He lingered by the wall uncertainly, glancing between her and the bed. She restrained a smile with difficulty. "How long until you trust me?" she repeated her question from what seemed like a lifetime ago. Bruce's tension finally fell away from him and he wilted a little, as though it had been the only thing keeping him upright. A smile, tired but genuine, ghosted over his face. He crossed the distance between them and climbed into the bed. She waited for him to get settled, then climbed in next to him. She felt his muscles clench.

"Relax, Bruce," she chided, "I'm not going to try anything." She curled up against him and draped an arm over his chest as he laughed. "It's easier to keep tabs on you from here," she commented as she rested her head on his shoulder. He smelled delicious, she thought distantly. "And besides, I'm really tired. Wake me if you go green…" she trailed off with a smile. Bruce snorted, but she felt his arm curl around her fractionally.

"Bruce?"

"Yeah?"

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"I don't know if anyone's ever told you this, but you're a terrible liar. I can feel your heart pounding."

He sighed beside her. "It's just… it's hard to relax when you're pressed up against me like that." He sounded so embarrassed. She propped herself up on one elbow to look at him.

"Bruce," she said with a laugh. "You are such a _dork_." And she pressed a kiss to his cheek and put a little more distance between them. She reached for his hand and tangled their fingers. "In case you need me," she explained, and went to sleep.

* * *

"What on _earth_ …" Clint's voice reached her from a great distance away. She faded back into awareness gradually and tried to place where she was. She felt the bed - Clint's house. She felt the fingers woven loosely between hers - Bruce. His breathing was deep and even beside her; he had finally fallen asleep. She cracked an eye and saw that he had turned towards her as he slept. Beyond Bruce, she saw Clint standing in the doorway, his face turned back towards the hall. "Laura!" he hissed. She shut her eyes before he looked her way again.

Light steps approached the door. "I told you, _Hawkeye_ ," said Laura's voice. The door closed, softly.

Natasha smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Firstly, the time line was a little dicey for me because it's not quite clear what time of day it is when they arrive at Clint's house. I picked morning. My slightly wobbly justification for this is that they show up in Wakanda in the morning, then fly back to Clint's house in the US, it would still be morning because of the five to seven hour time difference. I guess. 
> 
> Okay, let's talk about the dreaded sterilization scene for a moment. A lot of people really lit into Joss Whedon's writing here because they perceived the "Still think you're the only monster on the team?" line as equating her inability to have children with being monstrous. If that was what Natasha was saying, it would destroy who she is as a strong female character and I would hate it. As someone who isn't much younger than Natasha, I have run into the paradigm of women's worth being at least partially equated with motherhood and I hate it passionately - being a mother or not being a mother are both equally valid options in my mind and any attempt to try and lop off some of Natasha's worth because of her sterility would be horrifying and backward in the extreme. However, I really don't think that's what she meant. She told Bruce this highly personal information in the context of making him understand that what he thought of as a barrier - her wanting a family or some sort of traditional life - really wasn't a problem. He's worried that she wants a traditional future with him; she reveals that it's not possible for either of them. He feels like a monster after his rampage in Wakanda; she lets him in on the fact that deep down, coming from a background of being raised and trained and surgically sculpted into a killing machine, she feels like a monster too. It's a moment of connection, not of self-devaluation. She wants him to realize that they are, in some ways, very alike. And it works - Bruce goes from "There's no future with me" to "So we just disappear?" in the course of the conversation.
> 
> Some people have complained that Natasha crying over the fact that she can't have children is weak or OOC. I couldn't disagree more. Not only are both Natasha and Bruce very, very shaken after the number Scarlet Witch did on them, but they both get weepy during that exchange. It's an intensely painful two-way connection. They share each other's pain in that scene. Nobody complains that Bruce was too emotional there, even though he was clearly upset over the fact that he couldn't have children either. They have the same reaction to the same issue and Natasha takes all the fandom lashing. I believe that what Mark Ruffalo said about this issue is the best summation of the problem: if there were more female superheroes, then people would not react so violently to one of them showing a very believable range of emotion, complexity, and depth. As it is, Natasha is the only female on the team, and as such she can't be "weak" at all without people crying foul. It's a very unfair situation and a character paradox. How can she develop without emotion? She can't. Anyway, I would argue that the scene isn't about their lack of worth - it's about Natasha suggesting that there is meaning in just being together. It's just love, yet again. It's simple and idealized and beautiful... and I wish it had worked out for them, darn it!
> 
> One last thing: I think Natasha's grief over being forcibly sterilized is not over-the-top. In considering the issue, even as someone who doesn't want to have children, the thought of someone taking that choice away from me makes me nauseous. I think that literally cutting a choice away from a human being is a sick thing and something more than worthy of the pain she displayed. And Natasha isn't someone removed from emotion; if she was, that wouldn't make her strong - that would make her incredibly damaged or, worse, a sociopath. And that's not who she is. She is someone who feels keenly that what was done to her in the Red Room was wrong, and is horrified at her own past actions as well. She wants to make up for it. She feels guilt. She is also cognizant of the profound loss she suffered through her time in the Red Room and I think that's not only appropriate, it's healthy. Ultimately, what makes Natasha Romanoff so outstanding as a hero and a human being is that she still manages to feel emotions and to reach for connections with friends and possible romantic relationships after being through so much that could have warped her. Most people would shut down and be forever broken after that kind of torture and trauma. But Natasha survives, retains her ability to feel, and she doesn't just feel deeply, she overcomes her emotions (when necessary) with an astounding level of determination and control.
> 
> And then she falls in love with Bruce and sees a chance for a future without loss and pain... and she runs with it. Reaching for love after a lifetime of pain isn't weak; it's more strength than most of us have.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha Romanoff was never caught off guard - with one incredible exception. For such a big guy, Bruce Banner managed to sneak up on her. (A short story tracing the relationship from inauspicious start to possible finish.) Brutasha/BruceNat.

Within twenty-four hours, Nick Fury had materialized (Natasha _really_ wasn't surprised), Bruce had realized that Ultron was likely targeting Dr. Cho, and the Avengers were ready to mobilize again. Clint and Steve were leaving to take Dr. Cho into protective custody - or to fight Ultron if he had already gotten to her, which she suspected was the more likely option - and she was joining their strike team. Tony was heading off to follow a lead into the mystery of who was changing nuclear codes to keep Ultron's robotic hands off of them. Bruce was still not eager to be around civilians after what had happened in Wakanda, so he opted to go with Tony.

She pulled him aside as everyone gathered to leave. "I'll see you back at the Tower after this is over," she said quietly. "And then we can," she lowered her voice, hyper aware of how many spies were in the room, " _go._ "

Bruce looked at her in astonishment, like he had since the first time she suggested that she could leave with him. He still didn't believe it and she wasn't sure whether to feel flattered or sad about the fact. She avoided the question entirely and passed him his iPod instead. "I got you some new music," she explained when he looked at her questioningly. He smiled minutely and scrolled through the new playlist she had worked on while he was asleep.

" _Casablanca_ ," he said with a note of surprise and approval. " _The Wizard of Oz_ ," he smiled a little. "Chaplin soundtracks… and lots of Judy Garland…" He scrolled with a look of intense concentration and she felt the now-familiar rush of affection for him. This time, she didn't pull away from it. 'The Man That Got Away,'" he murmured and finally looked at her. "This is great… How did you know I liked these movies?"

"I just asked myself 'What's old and sappy?' and I was able to find a whole playlist just for you," she said flatly. He gave a self-deprecating smile and nodded.

"I guess you've got me pegged," he said quietly, staring at the cover art for _A Star is Born_.

She glanced at the distracted Avengers milling around the front door, and slid her hand into Bruce's discreetly. He went still. "It's going to be okay," she whispered. "Enjoy your music and I'll see you in a few hours."

"More like a day or so," he corrected quietly, and she saw the tension creeping back into his face.

"Hey," she interrupted, weaving her fingers through his. "A day _is_ a few hours. And then we can run as far and as fast as you like." Here they were, calmly discussing running away together, and they had never even kissed. That needed to be rectified, she thought distantly. She was tempted to pull him into a kiss then and there, but being within range of Tony's snark was not a particularly appealing prospect - and neither was being trapped in the quinjet for hours on end with a smug Clint. She settled for giving his hand one final reassuring squeeze.

"See you soon," she whispered. They went their separate ways.

* * *

The mission went about as well as she expected these days, between Ultron killing Dr. Cho and then making off with his new organic vibranium body (or whatever the hell that thing in the Cradle was). Steve took on Ultron and she worked on securing the Cradle; Clint stayed in the air. It was a long and frustrating ordeal, especially when she fought her way into the truck transporting the Cradle only to discover that the truck was capable of flight as it lifted off from the ground. Well that was just _great_. She decided to call Clint and try for a midair pickup instead of dying at the hands of gravity.

Clint was as unruffled as ever when he saw the flying truck and heard her plan; he moved into position beside and below the Cradle's transport and held steady as she finally cut the Cradle loose. The freefall was nauseating but effective, and they slid into the quinjet without damage. The wind whipped at her hair as she stood near the open hatch, but she was okay and the Cradle was secure. Maybe their losing streak was finally over-

A metallic arm clamped around her shoulders and pulled and she was flying through the air again. Wind roared in her ears and nearly drowned out the sound of Clint calling for her over the comms.

"Black Widow." Ultron's unnervingly human voice rang metallically in her ears and her heart froze. The feeling of freefall changed into the feeling of being propelled much too quickly through the air. The wind made it impossible to see, but she could feel the inexorable vise grip around her shoulders and midsection. "So glad we get to chat," he continued in his gravelly electronic rasp. She ignored him and tried to hear the chatter on the comms.

Steve was saying something about getting out of there with or without her and she knew he was right. Her heart still sank.

" _Do you have eyes on Nat?_ " Clint's voice insisted through her earpiece. She couldn't see anything or hear the quinjet; the wind was too strong.

And Ultron was laughing. He plucked out her earpiece and she was left blind and deaf except for the rushing in her ears. The thinning air began to take a toll and she felt unconsciousness closing in on her. "Oops," Ultron said as she succumbed to the darkness.

* * *

Alone and freezing in her cluttered makeshift cell in Sokovia, Natasha decided that if she survived this, she was going to have _words_ with Tony Stark about his little projects. She hated Ultron fiercely after his ridiculous scare tactics and his flare for dramatic exposition. The apple really didn't fall far from the tree, she thought angrily as she tried again to make the telegraph she had cobbled together from broken odds and ends work long enough to get a message to Clint.

It finally worked and she breathed a sigh of relief. Clint would show up quickly, that much she knew. And then they could kick Ultron's robotic ass straight into the sun, have a schwarma party, and forget this mess had ever happened. She settled in for a wait, listening for any useful information, but it was a fruitless effort. Ultron had cleared out hours ago, taking his newly minted minions with him, and the factory space where she was being held had fallen deathly silent in his absence.

She hummed some of Bruce's sappy songs in the silence, but the thick walls and yawning pit just beyond her cell didn't lend themselves to favorable acoustics and her tunes were swallowed up.

* * *

Hours passed in silence.

She heard footsteps at last and pushed herself to her feet. "Clint?" she called, straining to see through the dim light. Bruce emerged from the shadows.

"Bruce!" she blurted in surprise. He was wearing a determined look and carrying a massive gun. She blinked. It was kind of… hot. He pressed close to the bars and his hand drifted over hers. She was so glad to see him.

"I don't suppose you found a key lying around?" she asked dryly.

"Actually, I did." He backed away and lifted the gun. Natasha took cover and he blasted the door. Stepping though the stupid bars of Ultron's stupid prison was such a relief that she almost hugged him, but Bruce looked tense and she held back. "What's the plan?" she asked instead. Bruce explained that he still wasn't feeling safe around civilians and he had only come to rescue her. Her heart grew warm even as she mentally argued with his ridiculous self-doubt. The Big Guy would be fine as long as no Enhanced witches with grudges showed up to play with his brain.

"The job's not done," she objected when he finished. First, save the world. Second, run away and try for some kind of happily ever after. It was as clear as day. But he was firm that he wasn't going green, and Natasha realized several things at once: He didn't believe that he could be trusted around civilians (that simply wasn't true, and she needed to show him that), he wanted her to come away with him now before the mission was complete (and she just _couldn't_ , the world needed saving before they could find a place to hide in it) and finally, she wanted to kiss him very badly. He looked at her with something like commitment, and she decided to solve all the outstanding issues at once.

"I adore you," she said, and meant it. Somehow, this admission didn't sting at all and she wondered if she had reached a place where it no longer hurt to tell Bruce the truth. She finally pressed her lips to his and for once he didn't pull away from her; he yearned towards her touch. _How long until you trust me?_ The question surfaced unexpectedly in her mind and suddenly she realized that she could feel his trust in the way he touched her. The kiss was hurried and even a little desperate, but she still thought that it was very nice to kiss Bruce Banner.

Even with her eyes shut, she knew where the pit's edge was; she turned them toward it and the slid her hands to his chest. Reluctance coiled in her gut, but she summoned the strength she needed (it took much more mental strength than physical in the end) and _pushed_.

He hung weightless over the pit's edge for a moment, just long enough for her to see his look of contentment morph into disbelief, fear, and finally something far worse than either. He disappeared over the edge. "I need the Other Guy," she whispered apologetically, and vowed to make this up to him many times over after they saved the world. She barely had time to blink before the Big Guy leapt up in Bruce's place.

She noticed that he and Bruce were more in tune than ever; he was carrying the same look in his eyes that Bruce had as he fell.

Betrayal.

Her heart sank, and she repeated her mental promises to make this right. He needed to know that he wouldn't hurt anyone. He needed to know that he was safe. And she would gladly sacrifice his trust in her if it meant that he would only trust himself. Besides, she thought, she would work hard to earn his trust back.

They hurried outside and Natasha pulled in a sharp breath when she realized that the city in the distance was _flying_. It was an enormous chunk of dirt and rock with buildings piled on top, rising slowly higher and higher.

"Well," she muttered. " _That's_ not good."

The Big Guy grunted beside her. "Let's go, Big Guy."

He looked at her with pain in his eyes, but made no protest when she clambered onto his back. They leapt up into the air to chase the flying city.

* * *

The battle was a long and horrible one. Smashing hoards of robots turned out to be a lot less fun than video games had led her to believe and when she found Clint she told him in no uncertain terms that she would not be having Terminator marathons with him ever again. They worked hard to evacuate the civilians and keep them out of the line of fire, but there was only so much they could do when the earth was miles below them. _Not good_ , she thought distractedly as she destroyed robot after robot.

The whole team came together, plus a couple of spares (When did the Enhanced kids join their team? And who was the purple guy?), and Natasha thought that the Avengers might be a functioning unit again. She smiled at the Big Guy when he looked her way; he wouldn't hold her gaze and her smile slipped a little. She would have some work to do later.

Things got a little hopeless until Nick Fury showed up with an old helicarrier and evacuation shuttles and she _finally_ forgave him for faking his death during the Hydra fiasco. With the civilian evacuation properly underway, she hurried off to find the Big Guy with the lullaby and hopefully get the hell off this rock once and for all. She tried not to imagine how nice it would be to run off with only Bruce for company after this mess. She smiled a little when she imagined Tony's offended face when he realized they had disappeared.

The Big Guy was stomping through a ruined playground when she found him, ripping apart pieces of debris. He paused when he saw her. "Hey, Big Guy," she began, pulling off her glove. "The sun's getting real low." He hesitated a little longer than he usually did - and her heart broke a little - but he finally stepped in her direction and lifted his hand.

She heard the _whoosh_ of the quinjet too late, and bullets rained down on them like fire from above. She heard them slap into the Big Guy's skin and he roared with rage. Fear sliced through her like an icy blade. _No, this isn't how it ends!_ she thought with a rage all her own. Something hit her _hard_ and everything went dark.

* * *

Air rushed over her face and she opened her eyes. She was looking up at the Big Guy's face, tense with concentration above her. His arms were curled underneath her, holding her gently against his massive chest. Maybe his trust wasn't such a lost cause, she thought in relief. It took her a moment to wonder why they were flying through the air, but she wasn't afraid. Not when he had her.

She didn't see the deck of the helicarrier looming up beneath them in time to brace for impact, but he absorbed the force of the landing and laid her gently on the tarmac. He had saved her. She reached for him to start the lullaby and bring him back down to kissable dimensions, but he had already turned and leapt back towards the island in the air. Her hand fell back to her side.

* * *

She hurried to the control center and heard the chatter between Tony and Thor about blowing the chunk of rock apart before it could plummet to earth and cause worldwide extinction. Relieved that they had found a way to defuse the problem, she scanned for any sign of the Big Guy on the ground. She had to be sure that he was safely away before they blew it up…

"He's on the jet, Romanoff," Tony's voice crackled over the comms. "We saw him kick Ultron to the curb."

"Copy that." She sighed in relief and called the jet. The video call connected almost instantly and she saw him standing at the back of jet. She had never seen him so still - it was a little unnerving.

"Hey, Big Guy," she started, and he drifted towards the console and the camera it held. She spoke calmly and filled her voice with all the positive energy she could muster as she explained that they couldn't track him when the jet was in stealth mode. He raised his hand toward the screen and she smiled as he reached for her. She was just wondering whether or not to attempt a lullaby via video call when his hand abruptly fell. The picture cut out and the call faded into static. Her smile slipped.

Oh.

So he didn't forgive her after all.

_How long until you trust me?_ The question echoed in her mind like a distant scream.

She had her answer.

She forced her face to relax into blankness as she absorbed it. Maybe the Big Guy was just feeling hurt… and it would be fine. Even if the jet crashed or ran out of fuel, Bruce would be able to walk away from that. And he would call and they would pick him up and everything would be fine. She would apologize and he would forgive her.

Everything would be fine.

She tried to remember that as she watched the island in the air fall to earth in blasted chunks. One thought forced itself past her distraction.

_Castles in the sky._

* * *

Days passed. Weeks.

And Natasha realized that Bruce wasn't coming back.

She ignored the sensation of something ripping in her chest that had begun when the call turned to static the only way she knew how; she found a mission and disappeared into it. She focused on helping Nick, Tony, and Steve set up a new base of operations for the Avengers. The latest roster of Avengers, anyway. There was Wanda Maximoff, the Enhanced girl that had done so much damage to Bruce but had decided to join up in the end, Steve's friend Sam "Falcon" Wilson, and Colonel Rhodes AKA War Machine. Oh, and the weird purple guy that sounded like Jarvis and gave her the creeps. She still wasn't quite sure if he was robotic or not. Tony tried to explain it, but she didn't care enough to listen. "Ugh, Bruce could explain it better," he complained as he turned away. He didn't notice how she stiffened.

When the new base was set up and filled with the new recruits, Thor returned to Asgard for who knew how long and Tony climbed into one of his exotic cars and left too. She knew Steve would be along shortly to have a meeting about training the new roster, but she had no heart for it. She stood in the wide open space of one of the training rooms and stared at the blank, newly painted wall.

And she finally stopped running and _felt_ it.

Bruce was gone, and so was the future they had just started to build, ripped from her hands like mist that had just started to turn solid. She had thought running away together would be fun, would be an adventure, would mean true _freedom_ for both of them. And they would have been together.

She thought back to the man hiding in India and secretly acting as a doctor, the man who had calmly told her that she shouldn't try and kill him because she was the one who would end up hurt. She remembered his suspicious questions and his distantly sad eyes as he had stood beside an empty cradle. _I don't every time get what I want._

Neither did she. Maybe neither one of them was meant to.

She had fought so hard not to be afraid of him in the early days, trying to beat her nightmares at first and trying to help him trust himself later. She had fought not to be afraid of him and it had _worked_. And in the end, they had saved the world.

So long ago in New York, the first time they had been heroes together, victory had tasted like schwarma and unexpected apologies. But this time... this time she thought that victory carried a strangely bitter flavor.

She stood in the slanting light of the training room and felt keenly the immensity of the open space around her. But it was devoid of possibilities - a cold, crushing vacuum. Bruce's absence was a wound in this place. (Or maybe just in her heart; she couldn't tell, really.)

And in the silent vacuum, she realized abruptly that she had been right to be afraid in the beginning, only she had feared the wrong side of the coin. It may have been the Hulk that had haunted her nightmares… but it was Bruce's silence that ultimately hurt her. _Heads I win, tails you lose_ , Bruce's voice echoed in her head, the remnants of that most terrifying dream. She winced a little at the pain that blossomed in her chest.

She had always known in the reasonable part of her mind that her disturbing dream with Bruce and the house and the children was impossible. More than impossible - it was ridiculous. She knew that now, and she had known it then. But maybe… maybe the dream wasn't the only thing that had been impossible all along. Maybe the _entire thing_ was impossible. A couple of monsters trying to find happiness with each other and expecting that no one would get hurt. Maybe it was doomed to be impossible…

Of course, she would never really know.

She shut her eyes and allowed herself to look at the images of that alarming dream one last time - one last glance at the snapshots before burning them. Bruce smiling at her and unafraid, laughing children with red and brown hair, a home far away from fights and threats and pain, the empty ache in her chest finally filled with something warm and real… For one long moment, she felt the comforting wholeness of the dream settle around her like a warm blanket masking coils of barbed wire.

She opened her eyes and ripped herself free. The flickering images of the dream vanished like a desert mirage and the blank, barren wall swam back into view. It was as real and as solid as ever.

But it was still blank.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I knew early on that I would have to end things here. I hate it, but there was a horrible symmetry to the idea of picking up the story from the first time when Bruce and Natasha connected after the first movie and ending with the fallout of that connection. I also wanted to stick to canon for now, as painful as that may be. Try not to hate me, guys.
> 
> Quick shoutout to blueincandescence, the inestimable Tumblr blogger whose Brutasha metas have been giving me life recently. It was one of blueincandescence's metas on Bruce and Natasha's favorite movies that inspired me to throw in _Casablanca_ as a soundtrack that Bruce might like. And since _Casablanca_ is all about impossible love, it fits this ending perfectly...
> 
> The other soundtracks I picked for Bruce to like were _The Wizard of Oz_ (in which Dorothy awakens from a dream world), Chaplin soundtracks (Charlie Chaplin often composed the music for his films, including the gorgeous tune that would eventually become the heartbreaking song "Smile." Listen to his melodies... and feel your heart break. Ugh, Bruce would have loved the sweet melancholy of his music.), and _A Star is Born_ (in which a beautiful love story smashes into reality and doesn't survive the encounter. Also, Judy Garland sings the classic song "The Man that Got Away" in that movie...). I was being a little on the nose with the references lol.
> 
> I want to take a moment to address a couple of things that Natasha thought in this chapter, namely her thoughts that Bruce didn't forgive her and that she finally had an answer to the question of whether she would receive his trust. I think she was ultimately wrong in her conclusions, but I believe that she would have thought something along these lines. After the movie I kept asking myself (and anyone unfortunate enough to be within range) "Why didn't Bruce come back? WHY?!" He came to Sokovia for the sole purpose of leaving with Natasha (as he tells her, he felt too dangerous to be around civilians and so he had no intention of joining the fight) and he expresses his desire to run off with her. They were all set to disappear together, declarations were made ("I have a compelling reason not to lose my cool" and "I adore you"), but then… he changes his mind. WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS GOOD IN THIS WORLD, BRUCE BANNER?! Needless to say, I thought long and hard about what exactly caused his change of heart and what I concluded in the end is that Bruce and Natasha constructed a magical fantasy future for themselves and even Bruce, given to hopelessness as he is, eventually gave in to their intoxicating dream. I think when she chose the mission over leaving immediately with him that the dream shattered for him and he thought "What am I doing? This won't work. Natasha wants to be an Avenger and I can't take her away from that… She's not committed to a life of running and hiding forever which is all I can offer her. She's an Avenger first and that's the way it should be." Bruce drowned in an ocean of doubt and self-pity and he fell back on his tried and true default: running away. I want to slap him… but I can understand it. He pulls hope up by the roots every time it grows in his heart because in his experience it always withers in the end anyway. As Natasha thought earlier in the story, Bruce has a very low threshold for hope.
> 
> I also feel compelled to defend Natasha's grief at Bruce's departure both in the movie and in my version of events. I've seen people complain that she shouldn't be pouting because her love interest left, and my response is very simple. In what universe does someone fall in love and then respond to having their heart broken by feeling nothing? That's not strength - that's a symptom of a mental disorder. True strength isn't lack of emotion, it's perseverance and control in spite of emotion. Like I noted in the last chapter, Natasha feels things deeply. But it's not like she was a basket case, crying and giving up on life. All we see is her standing alone, staring at a wall. And she's entitled to feeling sad. But even heartbreak doesn't stop her from teaming up with Steve to train the new Avengers. The woman is unstoppable. But I think that she, like every other emotionally functional human being, is entitled to have feelings about failed dreams. After all, how would you feel if, for the first time in your life, you decided to pursue a healthy romantic relationship and you built up an ideal in your mind of the future you could have together… and then it crashed and burned? I thought about that from her perspective, and this last chapter is what I came up with.
> 
> So... what do you think?


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